The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies

The self-study in pdf.

 

Sustaining A Radical Vision for

The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies Self-Study

University of Redlands

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.[1]

The broad range of questions that sustainability raises have no single set of answers. We have yet to develop solutions. The topic is full of approximations, assumptions, projections, extrapolations, and ambiguities. Moreover, we should avoid simple stances because, to a greater degree than most other subjects, sustainability is open to indoctrination and partisan scholarship. . . . And beyond the complexities of sustainability as such, there lies the larger question of sustainability for what purpose. For sustainability will be best understood within the larger framework of values, meaning, and purpose — just as "solutions" are best considered within the context of the global society.[2]

I.     Introduction:  Four Decades of Distinctive Learning and Living in the Johnston Center

         The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies will commemorate its fortieth anniversary in February 2009.  It is an auspicious time for self-study, and we welcome the opportunity to reflect upon and evaluate our program. In doing so we hope to “avoid simple stances” as we articulate and revisit our “larger framework of values, meaning, and purpose.” We are also invested in sustaining Johnston, meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future, and embracing the complexities of what it means to be Johnston in 2009 and beyond.  We have much to celebrate concerning the overall success of Johnston education since the founding of Johnston College in 1969, yet, at the same time, we resist complacency. While comparable “alternative” education programs, such as Goddard and Antioch, have closed their doors or dramatically changed direction in the last decade, we sustained the size and character of our program.  Ten years ago we projected an optimal enrollment of about 180-200, which we have now met.  More importantly, Johnston thrives as a dynamic learning program that positively influences the larger College of Arts and Sciences (CAS).  We continue to serve as a national model of an effective living-learning community.  Our achievement results from the retention of core values that evolved in the founding era of Johnston, as well as our willingness to continue to experiment with new directions. We outline those values here to provide context for both change and continuity over this last decade. We are primarily charged with—and interested in—evaluating how effectively we have met our goals to remain a nationally recognized leader in alternative education. We also want to continue to make Johnston sustainable in light of current and future changes in ourselves and the world around us.

         Firstly, Johnston advocates student-centered interdisciplinary education.  Young people who feel constrained by disciplinary and structural constraints of secondary education still find our promise appealing.  We make “ownership” of education concrete through learning contracts negotiated at multiple levels of academic and personal experience:  in class design or “curriculum building” for Johnston seminars; in individual learning goals negotiated through class contracts; in the creation of a graduation contract that determine a student’s concentration or emphasis, liberal arts breadth, and cross cultural experience; and in the wide range of quotidian interactions that make up our residential living-learning community within the College of Arts and Sciences. We continue to embrace the contracting philosophy articulated in 1998: 

The Johnston contract grounds itself in particular values:  individualism, performance and achievement, self-accountability, autonomy, freedom, egalitarianism, mutual respect, compromise, and negotiation.  Our values prosper only if they are woven into all aspects of daily life, not just the classroom.  The contract system also requires trust; without it the planning and negotiation of course and graduation contracts          could not take place, and the contract system would degenerate into a vehicle of utilitarian exchange underwritten by personal rules.[3]

We have made changes to the organization and accountability of contracting, which we will explain later in this study.

         Secondly, Johnston practices consistent and on-going assessment of learning through this contracting process, most obviously in self and faculty evaluations that conclude each contract. We place equal emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge and skills, and on an understanding of the learning methods that made such acquisition possible.  We instruct students in the value of integrative and interdisciplinary learning—approaches that are not always self evident to students and faculty.  We work collaboratively to explore the possibilities of both modes of inquiry.  Because our faculty members help students identify appropriately challenging learning goals and design appropriate standards for defining individualized learning objectives, we facilitate the assessment process that monitors student achievements. We must build trust to effectively advise and teach students, especially since we have explicitly rejected the norm of received faculty authority.  This labor-intensive process has always made significant demands on faculty and staff resources. We have made some progress in regularizing resources since the last self-study, for example, through the addition of three “Johnston tenure-line” faculty members and an associate director.  We have also benefited from the promotion of Teresa Area to the role of Johnston Registrar.  But we have also experienced retirements and faculty load changes among many long time Johnston faculty supporters.  Thus, the continued development of faculty support and participation in Johnston remains a serious concern.

         Thirdly, Johnston does not recognize a boundary between the classroom and the “extra-curricular.” We honor experiential learning and recognize its validity as a method of learning integration.  Our students are explicitly discouraged from learning in isolation; we want them to work with each other in a community that gives them opportunities to test, debate, and apply newly acquired knowledge.  To this end, we direct students, faculty and staff to develop multiple possibilities for education through intentional community life.  This takes many forms, from the weekly community meeting every Tuesday through the informal conversations at gathering places like Java the Hutt, to programs like Lunafest and salons created to bring course insights to the larger campus community.  Community life is ever-changing and shaped by the often spontaneous conversations and initiatives that students (and sometimes faculty) create as part of their work together.  Here Johnston faces many of its largest challenges because our physical plant is woefully inadequate to meet our diverse needs.        

         Johnston enjoyed relatively stable enrollments in the last decade.  Data from the Admissions Office, provided for the years 2002-2007, show that we received an average of 105 applications each year, with an average annual yield of 42 students in our entering classes.  We admit most of the students who apply to Johnston, but many choose to go elsewhere.  However, the entering classes are appropriate to our planning for a total program population of no more than 200.  Of the applicants, female students out-number male students two to one.  On average, 57% if of our applicants report their race/ethnicity as  “white.”  The rest of our applicants who choose to report their ethnic/racial backgrounds are listed in Appendix A. Our retention rate is similar to that of the College, but since we admit an average of 15 internal transfers each year, our total enrollment tends to make up for those we lost. Our graduating classes averaged 47 seniors each year, which means we are one of the larger programs in the College. Specifically, Johnston graduated the third largest number of students (402) in the College of Arts and Sciences during the years 1996-2007, following Liberal Studies (586) and Business/Global Business (493).[4]

         Through both initial admissions and internal transfers, then, Johnston has continued to reach new generations of students committed to innovative, individualized learning in a residential community. New students join a Center that has weathered significant transitions.  Our leadership and some of our structural features have changed, as well as some academic processes. For example, leadership in the Center and College changed significantly when Dr. Kathy Ogren replaced Dr. Yasuyuki Owada as director in fall 1999, after Owada retired from the Center and the University.  Drs. Doug Bowman and William McDonald, both founding members of Johnston College, retired as well, as did President James Appleton. But new tenure-line faculty joined the Center as a response to our growth and these retirements:  Dr. Kelly Hankin in Film Studies and Dr. Julie Townsend in Interdisciplinary Humanities.  Most recently, Ogren returned to full time teaching at the University and Dr. Greg Salyer assumed the Directorship in fall 2007. Fortunately, dedicated faculty continue to contribute courses, advising, and community support to Johnston. The position of associate director was added in fall 2002, and in 2006, our registrar was promoted to Johnston Registrar.

          Johnston contributed important data to the University’s 2003-04 WASC accreditation review, engaged in a facilities planning process, expanded faculty offices “on complex,” survived two reunions, completed a $250,000 endowment campaign, and published a second book about the Center (Appendix B). We will discuss the impact of these initiatives in more detail later in this self-study, but we want to make clear here how successfully we have met the impact of dynamic changes, all the while retaining and refining contracted interdisciplinary education as the “best practice” of our living-learning community. 

Curriculum:  Johnston Seminars offered by the Center

         In the past decade, Johnston has offered 448 seminars, at an average of 44 per year.  As we might expect with increased enrollments in Johnston, our annual course offerings also increased by twenty courses from the 1998-99 academic year when we offered 39 total to 2007-08 when we offered 58. Faculty and staff sponsored 1,858 individualized studies, averaging 185 per year.  Most of the seminars have been interdisciplinary in their design and/or pedagogy. Seminars are offered annually by core faculty in Johnston (Ogren, Hankin, Townsend, Salyer), and by faculty from English and Creative Writing, History, Math and Computer Science (primarily Mike Bloxham’s two annual courses), Psychology (Fred Rabinowitz), Religious Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology.[5]  All of these departments make agreements with Johnston to support the program through the annual assignment of faculty courses.

         The Johnston Center promotes classes that emerge from intellectual and personal initiatives negotiated between faculty and students. We host specific curriculum-building events twice a year, during fall and spring Get Your Shit Together (GYST) weekend, although discussions and plans for courses take place year round. Curriculum building entails students joining with faculty to articulate desires for future classes. Faculty members from all over the college are invited to either announce their upcoming class or introduce themselves as a possible professor for future semesters. There is no one single method for curriculum building. Each year, faculty and students on the Academic Policy Committee (APC) and in the community come up with different strategies to make the curriculum-building experience more dynamic and interactive, which is better for all constituents. Each year, the organizers of curriculum building strive to work around some typical problems, the primary of which is that faculty and students often do not use the time to engage and negotiate with one another and rather use it as a springboard to simply lecture each other about their predetermined class or inflexible desires. Each year, then, the curriculum building organizers work to design innovative ways to combat this problem. In 2008 we successfully posted the course ideas on the Johnston web site so that curriculum building itself included more dialogue and less announcements. The success of GYST each year depends on student initiative and passion and faculty engagement.

         For faculty curriculum-building plays an important role in building and maintaining the academic and living components of the community. First, for Johnston faculty, participation in and attendance at curriculum building enables students to see that we not only care about their education, but we also want to help them learn how to be agents in its own design. For faculty new to Johnston, curriculum-building is a place that allows them to identify and introduce themselves to students, as well familiarize themselves with and witness what it means to work collaboratively with students. Curriculum-building is also important for faculty because it helps us track students’ ever-changing learning interests and goals. While it is impossible for Johnston faculty members with full loads in the program to build and negotiate all of their classes through curriculum building (e.g., it would unmanageable from and administrative perspective), participating in curriculum-building continues to generate classes that, in some incarnation, come to fruition.

We define a number of approaches or strategies for interdisciplinarity in Johnston curriculum and contracts.  They can be most usefully grouped as follows: 

·      “Multi-Disciplinary Approach or Disciplinary Clusters”: a variation on the “double major”; two or more areas that are linked through a notion of the liberal arts – that a well-rounded education involves an understanding of more than one way of looking at things.

·      “Multiple Approaches to a Guiding Question”: such as “how do we read” through literature, philosophy, and sociology; or, peacemaking through sociology, political science, and psychology.

·      “Primary area and offshoots”: this method showed up a couple of times, often in a narrative form… “I started with this discipline and it led me to this other discipline, which helps me better understand the first discipline.”

·      “Process Based, or the Medium and the Message”: contracts that combine an area of study with an area of practice, such as Feminist Studies and Visual Arts – with visual arts as a way to perform feminist activism.

·      “Interdisciplinary Methods”: contracts that set the methods of two or more disciplines in conversation with one another.

What this suggests, we think, is that students are not only engaging in interdisciplinary practice but also are taking a creative approach to interdisciplinarity.  This range of approaches is quite impressive and reveals that students are—in advising and/or classes—gaining a sophisticated notion of how disciplines might relate to each other. One way to see the impact of interdisciplinary learning is through the titles of the graduation contracts sampled for this self-study (Appendix D). 

Curriculum:  Contracted in classes across the College

         Johnston students forge their contracts from a combination of Johnston seminars, individualized studies, and courses selected from across the College of Arts and Sciences.  In all courses students individualize their learning goals through course contacts.

         One of the central components of teaching Johnston seminars and teaching Johnston students is working with students on their “course contracts.” At the beginning of the semester, Johnston students are asked to write a contract for their course. Negotiated with the professor, these contracts lay out the student’s plans for individualizing the course, not only in terms of academic projects, but individual learning goals. For both the faculty and the student, the contract can be an exciting but challenging experience. It is exciting for students to think about the possibilities of shaping the course in a way that integrates their own passions and pursuits into it, but it is challenging because students often need a lot of guidance to figure out how best the process can work. For Johnston faculty, an average contract negotiation takes a variety of shapes but might include an initial discussion of the professor’s and student’s hopes for the contract, one or two follow-up meetings, side-conversations on the porch, emails, and occasional, last-minute, frantic phone calls. The average contract negotiation is approximately forty-five minutes per student. Give that each seminar will have twelve to twenty students, the time commitment of contract writing for faculty teaching Johnston seminars is quite demanding. 

         As the course contract process is central to a Johnston education, the program asks that Johnston students write contracts for all of their courses, both within and outside of the program. In general, this process works well, with students negotiating course contracts across a variety of disciplines. However, there are a few problems that indirectly affect Johnston faculty. First of all, students taking classes with adjuncts and visiting professors have reported difficulty with getting their instructors to understand the process. As a result these visiting faculty members cannot be relied upon to help students through the course contract process. The upshot is that Johnston faculty are often asked to be de facto advisors for this course, working as a liaison between the visiting faculty and the student (see unofficial advising below). Secondly, there are a few permanent faculty who are resistant to contracting at all, so students are prevented from fully integrating those courses into their Johnston education.

          We want to expand the opportunities for Johnston students to learn foundational knowledge and methodological approaches in particular disciplines. The highly individualized and interdisciplinary curriculum created by Johnston students in their graduation contracts can mean that they do not follow a prescribed sequence of courses. We want to honor that freedom and provide some opportunities for beginning-level instruction in disciplines and/or interdisciplinary learning.  While many Johnston students do take introductory courses across the college, there are particular challenges for Johnston students enrolling in CAS introductory courses.  First, some, but certainly not all, introductory courses do not emphasize interdisciplinary learning.  Second, Johnston students have uneven experiences contracting introductory courses, in part because they are more likely to be taught by adjuncts and visitors.  Contracting can be effectively accomplished in courses with willing and practiced faculty.  

         Yet foundational knowledge is a key part of crafting a rigorous emphasis and course of study.  However, given the challenges stated above, there is a noticed resistance to taking introductory courses among a percentage of Johnston students.  A predictable result is that Johnston students are not best prepared to begin upper level work in their areas of interest or in their breadth courses.

         Faculty participating in the focus groups for this self-study joined Academic Policy Committee members in expressing a strong interest better designing and promoting foundational learning for Johnston students. Our first year seminars have been revised to meet this need and are discussed later in this section. Faculty members have also stepped forward to offer “foundations” courses, for example, Fred Rabinowitz in psychology and Kevin O’Neill in philosophy.  Kathy Ogren plans such a course for history called “The Historian’s Craft,” and there is some planning for a future course in world religions through Johnston. 

         Dr. Rabinowitz’s observation about his experiences illustrates how Johnston’s emphasis on creating student-centered learning provided a good pedagogical foundation this introductory level class.  He also describes problems with students who are new to Johnston and who sometimes struggle with our emphasis on collaborative learning practices.

For 2/3 of the students, I thought that the class worked really well.  We built community by starting with readings on interpersonal relationships and applying these to building group cohesion. This helped to create an atmosphere conducive to sharing both personal and intellectual information.  I ended up using a series of original source readings from the field of psychology, beginning with Freud in the early 1900's to recent articles about neuropsychology.  Students worked on individual projects that were presented to the class toward the end of the semester.  Our discussions were engaging and as one student put it, "It felt like we were a bunch of friends discussing our views on psychology and life."  Some said that the readings and discussions carried over into the residence halls in the evening.  

The first year students got a good sampling of a Johnston class in which they did a lot of the agenda building and felt the responsibility of making the class work.  The one third of the class who I think were disappointed, expected me to lecture and structure their work and assignments.  These students were unable to motivate themselves to keep up with the reading or put together papers that reflected their interests.  I refused.  I kept saying, "This is your class.  If you want to take Introduction to Psychology with exams, take the traditional textbook, multiple choice course taught by the psychology department."  I think the students were adequately exposed to the main areas of psychology if they did the readings, including personality, intelligence, motivation, emotions, the brain, social psychology, psychotherapy, behaviorism, human cognition, and humanistic psychology. The element I added to the mix was the focus on interpersonal relationships that isn't usually covered  until the end of most introductory courses.”

         We expect other faculty colleagues to try “foundational” courses.  Each will teach in accordance with their personal and interdisciplinary or disciplinary goals, of course, but if a collection of these courses is offered on a regular basis, we can better advise students, particularly in the contract committees, to consider these classes that will both serve their needs for introductory level information as well as reinforcing Johnston’s emphasis on responsible student contracting and learning.  Additionally, we ask advisors to direct Johnston students to faculty who are familiar and open to contracting courses, building on conversations with faculty and departments across the college to help Johnston students meet their learning goals in College of Arts and Sciences introductory courses. 

         Johnston has offered first year seminars to all its incoming students since the program was initiated at the College.  Students and faculty reported general satisfaction with the model, but we found that advising was uneven, and we missed opportunities to orient the first year Johnston class to our living-learning community.  Beginning in fall 2005, we introduced a major change to this program. All Johnston first year students are enrolled in a common course, taught by a trio of faculty. This model enables students, faculty, and peer advisors to learn through interdisciplinary exchanges and varied pedagogical styles, as every student will study with each of the faculty members in a rotation. We anticipated that these changes would help students learn about contracting options and curriculum-building in their first semester.  We’ve made sure that at least one faculty member who is well grounded in Johnston practices is part of the teaching team, and we have encouraged colleagues new to Johnston to learn through participation in the  “mega-seminar.”  And finally, each student will get to know three different faculty members to consider as potential, long-term advisors.

         The new seminar format has addressed several shortcomings from the older one:  we have more consistent advising, fewer students unhappy with their seminar selection, and much improved opportunities for community “bonding.”  Complaints about the overall academic quality and/or the structure of the classes continue—issues that have arisen in all first year seminar formats.  Benefits outweigh complaints, and we will continue this format in the near future.

         Johnston enjoyed the curricular and learning diversity offered through the January Interim.  Given our emphasis on student-centered course development and learning, the Interim provided important flexibility for our students and faculty. When May Term replaced Interim in the College curriculum, we continued to see consistently strong support for the term.  It’s important to us in several ways.

         We are currently offering twice as many courses—including travel and student-taught courses—in May Term than we did in Interim.  We averaged four courses per Interim term from 1999-2002.  From May 2003-May 2006, we averaged 9.  Some of the classes are quite specific to Johnston’s needs, as is the case with the Community Study, used by staff and students to prepare for the fall semester, and the Revisioning Oaxaca follow up to the Oaxaca Integrated Semester.  Individualized studies offered through Johnston remained about the same in the transition from Interim to May Term, averaging 44 per term.  Students seeking experiential learning often use these courses, for example, internships, or a chance to reflect on cross cultural experiences.  Seniors use the term to finish their senior projects and/or to teach Johnston seminars.

         Late April and May are crucial for the timing of our graduation reviews.  Our academic calendar requires most of the fall and early spring semester for graduation contract meetings with sophomores.  After the spring semester break, we must move seniors into the final revision of their contracts with advisors, graduation checks, and graduation contract reviews.  Each of these meetings can take close to an hour and require coordination with four faculty members, staff, and students.  May Term gives us much needed time for these important rites of passage in Johnston.

         In terms of classes, we have made a good adjustment to the change from Interim to May. 

Integrated Semester, Student Taught Courses, Capstone Equivalents

         The individualized nature of Johnston graduation contracts provides for a variety of senior projects, research papers, exhibitions, and experiential learning syntheses equivalent to the “capstones” taught across the College.  Some students enroll in capstone seminars in CAS departments or programs as part of their projects, while others create individualized studies through Johnston.  Proudian Interdisciplinary scholars follow that program’s guidelines.

         The Integrated Semester and student-taught courses are two paths specific to Johnston.  Beginning in 1995, the Johnston Center created an advanced course for students who wanted to explore ambitious interdisciplinary topics through 8-12 units of faculty-supervised work that usually culminates in a large project at the end of the term. Students have considerable flexibility with regard to the “normal” schedule of classes, so that they can learn to design and execute well-planned individual work.  All enroll in at least one class outside of the Integrated Semester, and many participate in classes as part of their projects. The Integrated Semester meets once a week, facilitated by a Johnston faculty member, who ensures that the students have developed appropriate plans for research and creative work.  The seminar director also ensures that students find and develop effective relationships with faculty experts who can supervise the projects, and the course director synthesizes and writes the final evaluation for the seminar.  Students apply to the class with a formal proposal and a letter of support from a faculty advocate.  They must have contracts on file, (and therefore at least sophomore standing), as well as the endorsement of a faculty sponsor.  Ideally, Integrated Semester students present their work to the community –singly or as a group—at the end of the term.

         We have reviewed the successes and challenges of the Integrated Semester and found that it was difficult to ensure that all students could create projects appropriate to the demands and scope of the model.  Those who made good use of the program often created stunning work, for example Roya Amirsoleymani’s women’s studies honors thesis and art show. Some juniors and sophomores continue to benefit as well, as they explore their concentration area in depth and prepare for solid study abroad and senior year projects.  Miriam Halsey is a good example of this phenomenon. She studied abroad in Amman, Jordan, and, upon her return, she expanded and adapted her research on the homosexual community of Amman into a May Term 2005 course titled “Struggles of Marginalized Groups.” Use of Integrated Semester for course planning is another representative use of this class. We would like to see more consistency across projects, however, and so we have revised the application form and will be more vigilant in our review of student proposals.  We have also encouraged our colleagues to be more careful when they recommend an Integrated Semester at contract committees.  Our recently improved application is included in the appendices.

         Johnston offers another unique opportunity to some of its students through our student-facilitated courses, and this option helps maintain the experimental curricular explorations of earlier Johnston eras.  We included an average of eight student–facilitated courses each year in our curriculum totals.  The number of courses sponsored by faculty and facilitated by students has risen slightly in the last five years. Students develop topics from the expertise they have gained and then build a course plan based on additional research supervised through individualized studies preceding the semester in which a course is taught.  The student-faculty relationship varies.  Some students and faculty co-teach the class and in other cases, the faculty member might attend the class as an observer. Students have created study abroad classes, produced plays, films, musicals, and an opera under the umbrella of the student-facilitated course. In all cases, we expect that the student and faculty member are meeting regularly to plan and discuss the course. Students must write evaluations for these seminars, and if they do not, their graduation contract stipulations have not been met, and their transcripts are held.

         Several APC and small community discussions focus on the planning, discussing, and evaluation of student taught courses. Students have met with the Hunsaker Teaching Chair, the Johnston director, staff members, and carious groupings from the APC faculty to evaluate the challenges and successes of the seminars. Remarkably, we have few complaints from facilitators or students in the seminars about the overall quality of knowledge and/or workload, and these seminars help broaden the range of our offerings, as was the case recently with a student taught computer science offering sponsored by Professor Pani Chakrapani.         

         In their role as undergraduate “teachers,” our students struggle with various pedagogical issues—such as how to keep a discussion lively, how to motivate peers, and how to hold a class member accountable to the contract. In other words, they learn quickly how hard it is to be “on the other side of the table.” Students report great enthusiasm about the knowledge and confidence gained in teaching these classes, and they are particularly valuable for those who anticipate a career in teaching. Most classes are well-received, although we sometimes have the same problems with late writing of evaluations in these seminars as we have in the seminars taught by full time faculty members. Some faculty sponsors are unaware of the range of responsibilities involved in these classes as well. We are committed to helping colleagues with our web site, advising handbook, meetings, and one-on-one explanation about how to sponsor a class.  We remain committed, however, to this aspect of a Johnston education because it embodies a well-documented and attested fact of teaching and learning: that learning often occurs at its highest level in the form of teaching. Student-facilitation is also another unique feature of the Johnston Center that marks its difference from other alternative programs.

         Johnston students not only design individual course goals—they create their own curriculum for a specified degree in “negotiation” with faculty, peers, the advisor, and the Johnston registrar. Contracts are typically brought to committee in the sophomore year. All of them follow a common format with a narrative, a course listing by concentration and breadth, and a chronological listing. Consistent with the Johnston philosophy, students make the contract their own through narrative and organizational choices. Johnston does not advocate specific requirements, although we expect all graduation contracts to address a concentration (or emphasis), liberal arts breadth, and a cross-cultural experience relevant to the student’s undergraduate education.

         The one hundred contracts sampled for this self-study document a consistent commitment to interdisciplinary study by Johnston students. A full list of the student names, titles of the contracts, and their B.A. or B.S. status is provided in the appendices. Categorizing these degrees is not easy, and in many ways, one must arbitrarily choose only one aspect of the concentration, and doing so, we obscure innovative integrations made by our students.  But to some degree, the topics central to Johnston interdisciplinary degrees can be generalized as follows:  Studio Art and Visual Art (14); Literary and Historical Studies (12); Social and Cultural Studies, including activism (11); Writing (10); Women’s and Gender Studies (9); Film/Media Studies (7); Humanities, including Philosophy and Languages (7); Music (6); Environmental Studies (5); Race and Ethnic Studies (3); Psychology (3); Business (3); Theater (3); Religious Studies (2); Politics (2); Mathematics (2); Biology (1).

         In addition to a concentration, we expect Johnston students to address liberal arts breadth and cross-cultural learning in their contracts. Students create their own categories for breadth, which are often interdisciplinary and may be linked to their concentrations. It is typical to see some configuration of Humanities, Social Sciences, Creative Arts, Language, Natural Science and Quantitative Reasoning. 

         In order to address cross-cultural learning, we ask students to integrate experience in a cultural or social context significantly different from those of their families, cultures, and/or communities of origin into their course of study. We have long contended that students learn a great deal about themselves, as well as about a “foreign” or “different” culture through the cross-cultural expectation. We hope to see them incorporate that study into concentrations, senior projects, or reflective essays. Everyone is encouraged to write about the cross-cultural experience in his or her final graduation contract narrative. Ideally, our students will choose to immerse themselves in a different culture, including language study, and many students choose to study abroad in semester-long courses or May Term travel. A few students will qualify for the year-long semester abroad. We also have developed the Oaxaca Integrated Semester, which is a Johnston seminar, as an opportunity, which is described below. Those students who either cannot or do not travel outside the United States are encouraged to find an internship or community service opportunity. A very few students will choose the option of writing an essay for the director explaining why they will not engage in cross-cultural learning as part of their Johnston contract. The director then determines whether or not our expectations in this area have been met. 

         In the last decade, Johnston students’ options for study abroad became slightly more restricted than in previous years. Fears about safety and liability have led to greater scrutiny of proposed individualized study abroad, and we now require students to document an institutional affiliation for any individualized contracts for study abroad. Furthermore, we have regularized the contracting to include the Off-Campus Study Form (Appendix E). See Appendix F for a table of Johnston study abroad enrollments. Johnston faculty members support study abroad generally through course offerings and service on the selection committee for the year-long study abroad petitions.

         We also sponsor a new cross-cultural study abroad experience through travel courses and our Oaxaca-Guatemala Integrated Semester. Working with the University of Redlands Study Abroad Office, this special Integrated Semester is offered in alternate spring semesters. It includes a May Term Course on campus that reflects upon and presents the particular group’s experience to the Johnston and broader University and Redlands communities. The program is directed and led by Dr. Patricia Wasielewski, who teaches women’s studies, sociology, Latin American studies, and is a valuable Johnston faculty member. Typically, 10-12 students are picked to travel to Oaxaca City in Oaxaca, Mexico where they spend the spring semester studying and working on projects meaningful to them as a group and individually.

         The current program evolved from Dr. Wasielewski’s goal, formulated in 2002-03, of developing a University of Redlands sponsored study abroad trip to Latin America. The evolution of this learning opportunity exemplifies how Johnston curriculum can evolve through negotiated faculty and student interests. Dr. Wasielewski’s previous experience taking students to Latin America for a month in what was then a January Term convinced her that study abroad in this area of the world could provide students an opportunity to bring Johnston’s living/learning model into a distinctive study abroad context. From the inception, the goal was to provide a trip that was 1) affordable to most every students, 2) focused on the developing world, 3) collaborative with other members of the University of Redlands community, and 4) generative of a collective experience would emphasize the development of community among the student participants and between them and the people of the countries they visited.

         Students enroll in a language school in Oaxaca where they take 15 hours of classes in either Spanish or one of the indigenous languages of the area (for example, Zapotec) per week. They live in local homes and are otherwise immersed in the community to enhance language learning. In addition to the emphasis on language, students are required to attend a class given by Dr. Wasielewski entitled Globalization and Tourism. This class asks students to look reflectively at their own and others’ experiences of travel. The idea is to start the discussion of their experiences of living, studying, and traveling while they are having them. Many study abroad programs incorporate some form of reflection, but by making this both a personal and generally applicable class, Dr. Wasielewski facilitates greater awareness of the issues—from how one reacts once outside their comfort zone to how one interacts with locals to how one can challenge colonialism. 

         Students can focus about half of their class time into projects that interest them and in the case of the Johnston students, directly relate to their contract emphasis. Each student must formulate a semester long project to present at the end of the semester and to either present or reflect upon in the May Term follow-up class. Projects traditionally have enhanced or amplified interests and given students a way to provide a cross-cultural comparison to their main emphasis or major. Most of the time they are also related to the final required component of the semester, that each student in some way connects with and works independently in some area of the Oaxacan community. The breadth of these community involvement experiences has been great. Some take the form of working with philanthropic, governmental, or private organizations. Others have a more individual character, such as interviewing people for writing or research projects.

         While Oaxaca serves as the program’s base, the students travel quite a bit within the country of Mexico—making trips to Mexico City, and two trips to compare eco-tourist projects, one to the Sierra Madre Mountains and another to the Oaxacan Pacific Coast. There is a three-week travel trip to Guatemala in the last third of the semester. The areas and programs visited in Guatemala are chosen because of their similarities to programs the groups studied in Oaxaca. The trips allow students to see how governmental and private organizations and policies are enacted differently in countries with fundamentally different histories. It clarifies the ideas studied about tourism and globalization and emphasizes the global connections between the U.S., Mexico, and Central America. This component of the trip has worked really well to bring into perspective the ideas and problematize the advantages that students have to study and work abroad.

         The spring Integrated Semester comes to a close when the course returns to campus. Then, students enroll in a companion May Term course designed to help reintegrate them back into their daily lives by helping them share what was meaningful and significant about their experiences and adjust collectively to their return. The larger University community validates students’ experiences when the class creatively thinks about how to express a whole semester of major events into a public event showcasing the Oaxacan and Guatamalan learning experiences. It also allows the group to retain the support of their community and enhances the chances that new insights that they have gotten might be further incorporated into their daily lives. For instance, perhaps students have a much better understand of “fair trade coffee” after visiting a fair trade finca on the coast of Oaxaca, so they can explain to fellow students why it is important to use fair trade coffee in the Johnston coffee house.

    The Oaxacan-Guatemala Integrated Semester has taken place three times in this review period. Overall, Johnston judges the class a success. Dr. Wasielewski worked hard on structural arrangements within the University to address issues of cost, which is a barrier to cross-cultural study that she sought to eliminate with this program. Students use their regular tuition/room and board to cover costs. Additional costs, including airfare to get to the destinations was also kept low and partially subsidized by the tuition/room costs to make additional out of pocket cost reasonable. The program has done a good job of providing an opportunity for students who are “price out” of available study abroad for a semester by bringing the out of pocket cost of this trip to less than most May Term experiences.

         This course also provides a valuable alternative to the long-standing program in Salzburg that many generations of University (and Johnston) students have attended. The focus on a non-European setting and the change to study Spanish helps students who have strong interests in Latin America, globalization, border studies, and economic development. The Oaxaca-Guatemala program specifically provides travel to two countries and allows the comparison of the different ways development is occurring or being resisted. This is a substantially different perspective than that offered in the more typical programs that provide travel and study in one country.

         Furthermore, the idea that students from the same University travel together has many advantages. From a cost perspective of the larger University, a trip such as the Oaxaca-Guatemala program minimizes outlay of University resources to a third party. Dr. Wasielewski’s goals were a bit different. Institutionalizing the program has had the effect of creating a series of student groups with similar experiences and a raised consciousness of the issues and opportunities of working in developing areas. It has helped to solidify career directions for several of the alumni of the program and has started to create an awareness of our connection to the Oaxacan and Guatemalan communities abroad, but also those communities that have migrated to southern California.

         Finally, the goals of the program were best served within the context of the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies. Not only was Johnston student interest high in the program, but it also provides a new context to set up and achieve a living/learning community consummate to the general goals of the program. This community emphasis has grown in successive trips and has become a focal point. It is true that in all three trips the groups have been about evenly split between Johnston students and CAS students, but the ethos of Johnston overwhelmingly govern most aspects of the trip. The most recent trip involved a new innovation made possible by the endowment fund. Two alumni were supported by the fund to be community facilitators and teaching assistants. By all accounts this innovation was a success and will serve as a model for increased alumni participated in the Johnston enterprise as well as providing much-needed support for Dr. Wasielewski in terms of community building, pedagogy, and logistics.

         Some dissatisfaction with the quality of writing, particularly expository or analytical writing, surfaced in APC and faculty focus group self-study discussions. Given that much of our academic process requires students to put their learning goals and outcomes into a written form—course and graduation contract narratives—writing emerged as an area in which every Johnston student can be assessed. Yet we also want to honor the individuality of each contract and allow for the relative skill levels of the student writing. Some Johnston students consistently and effectively contract relevant writing goals into their contracts, but others need more direction in order to develop, sustain, and improve their writing. Although we did not reach a consensus about what changes we might make, we validated the role of the contact committees as advisory bodies that can steer a student towards more effective writing instruction. We are pleased that Dr. Julie Townsend can offer writing specific courses in Johnston as part of her load, and several of our seminars emphasize writing in the contracting process. We also provide programs to sophomores and seniors to aid in the writing and revision of contract narratives. We’ve debated the pros and cons of additional senior level seminars that might address writing as part of post-Johnston plans.

Improving the Graduation Contract Process

         We have made some important changes in the organization and philosophy of graduation contract committees. Because getting four faculty members to volunteer during the busy workday is not necessarily the easiest task (which falls on the desk of the administrative assistant), in the past one of our most important goals was simply getting faculty volunteers. However, as a result, the composition of the contract committees might result in an entire committee of faculty unfamiliar with Johnston’s pedagogical goals, and some even proved antagonistic to the Center. Moreover, because the call for volunteers listed the student’s emphasis title, the committees often attracted faculty volunteers less interested in the student’s interdisciplinary emphasis than their own disciplinary agenda. As a result, contract committees were uneven, sometimes successful and other times unruly or unhelpful. Neither of the latter experiences proved helpful to our students. 

         As a result, and after much discussion in our Academic Policy Committee, we made small but significant changes in both the structure of the contract committees and the call for volunteers while maintaining our most important goal of having a committee diverse in intellectual outlook and resources. The first change was to regularize having more seasoned faculty on each contract committee. These faculty members serve as a resource for questions about the program, a mentor to new faculty, and, frankly, a gatekeeper against program naysayers. The second change was to remove the student’s name from the call for volunteers, which would deliberately discourage faculty members from simply volunteering for those students they are familiar with. Yet another change was to add a cover sheet to all contracts that provided a framework for participation by faculty, many of whom would be serving on their first contract committee. Faculty were then able to understand their role on the committee and prepare accordingly. The cover sheet is listed in the appendices. By all accounts, particularly from our Johnston registrar who sits on every contract—Teresa Area—these changes have been positive. Contracts committees have been functioning better, which is a plus for our students who rely on the committee to help them craft their interdisciplinary course of study. Additionally, while committees remain difficult to fill, with a dedication to having seasoned faculty on each committee, the program is at least assured that the integrity of the particular academic ritual is maintained.

         Johnston students bring their completed contracts back to a graduation review committee in the senior year. Participation in such a committee is required to graduate, as it is the committee that determines if a student has fulfilled the contract, and on the basis of the review, the committee makes the recommendation to the Board of Trustees, president, faculty and Johnston community that the student be graduated. This process remains relatively unchanged from past years and for good reason: it is one of the highlights of a Johnston education, providing, as it does, a comprehensive and celebratory review of the student’s unique educational path. Students must work with advisors to re-write their contracts as needed, and they work with the Johnston registrar to get their transcripts in order. We do struggle with the timing of graduation reviews, particularly since students do not often get everything ready until the latter weeks of April and May. We often see over half of the seniors trying to schedule reviews in the last two weeks available to them. A reconsideration of this scheduling process may be needed in the future.

Evaluations, Changes in processes and data

         The Johnston Center’s contracted education depends on effective coordination of contract writing, self and faculty evaluations completed at the end of the term, and timely submission of written evaluations by faculty. We have consistently worked to improve each of these stages of contracted learning over the last decade.  Internally, we have redoubled our efforts to help students learn how to better design and negotiate their course contracts, and we consistently emphasize the importance of self and faculty evaluations. The new format for the first year seminar is helping us model these practices for the incoming class. We also host a variety of outreach meetings and sessions with faculty to review how Johnston works, and to help answer questions they may have. At the behest of the Faculty Review Committee, we instituted a new process for the collection of student evaluation of faculty in Johnston seminars. The Johnston administrative assistant collects these evaluations, records them for faculty consultation, and sends them to the Office of Academic Affairs for faculty teaching dossiers.

         Late evaluations from faculty proved a problem for Johnston over the years. Most obviously, students (and their advisors) who do not receive evaluations cannot benefit from the assessment, observation, and advice of faculty. Additionally, transcripts with numerous VZ designations (course contract on file but no evaluation provided) can easily be misread by outside audiences. It is not clear that these are courses in which students have completed the work in good standing. Whereas most colleagues write their evaluations within the six weeks allowed by the academic calendar, some do not. Retirees, adjuncts or visiting professors sometimes leave without completing their evaluations as well. We addressed this problem through the initiation of yearly letters to colleagues that enumerate the missing evaluations and state the importance of the evaluation to the Johnston process and to the students’ success. We also created an “amnesty” process through which the director determines which evaluations will probably never be written. S/he then directs the registrar to insert the following language into the evaluation: “The [student’s name] has completed this course in good standing. The absence of an evaluation is solely the responsibility of the faculty member.” 

         Johnston continues to follow the same general practices as the rest of the College with respect to academic warnings, probation, and dismissal. The director, aided by the Johnston registrar, reviews all Johnston student transcripts at the end of each term and makes the appropriate designations. These “academic actions,” which are confidential, for the past ten years are listed in Appendix G.

         All in all the Johnston academic process has remained strong, successful, and true to its founding philosophy while adapting to the vagaries of the surrounding University dynamics, changing student population, and the influx of new faculty and programs. 

         Since its incorporation into the College of Arts and Sciences, the Johnston Center faculty has been comprised of an interdisciplinary cross-section of University professors who contribute to the Center on a voluntary basis. This dedicated volunteerism to the program on the part of faculty members, housed primarily in departments across the University, has been and continues to be crucial to the Center. Our interdisciplinary mission and goals are best served by contributions from a broad range of faculty across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and arts. 

         Since the last self-study in 1998, the Johnston Center has made significant changes to its faculty resource structure. While faculty volunteerism remains crucial to the sustenance of the Center, the program is no longer solely supported by voluntary contributions. Rather, in addition to its wide interdisciplinary support, Johnston now has a small, stable faculty of its own. As a result of the last self-study, which outlined a need for a film studies professor, Dr. Kelly Hankin was hired in the Fall of 2002 and received tenure and promotion to associate professor in 2006. Her full course load is in Johnston, though with the support of the Center, she contributes one class per year to the Women’s Studies program. Hired in 2005 to fill the gap in literary studies left by the retirement of Johnston founder Bill McDonald, Dr. Julie Townsend teaches Interdisciplinary humanities and was successfully promoted to associate professor in her second year. Like Hankin, Townsend teaches her full load in Johnston, though will occasionally teach for Women’s Studies as well. The hiring of Hankin in 2002 and Townsend in 2005 has meant that, for the first time in its history, Johnston has two full-time faculty members primarily dedicated to the health and growth of the program. 

         In addition to these two full-time positions, Johnston has also effectively acquired two part-time faculty positions since the time of the last self-study. These half time positions come as a result of a transition in the Johnston director position. In the fall of 2007, Dr. Kathy Ogren officially transitioned from her role as Johnston director to full-time faculty member. Though still a member of the history department, Ogren will now teach half of her course load in Johnston, offering the Center three courses per year. During her first year back as a full-time faculty member, Ogren also helped mentor Dr. Greg Salyer, who assumed the role of director in August 2007 and, in addition to his duties in this arena, will teach a number of courses in and beyond his areas of expertise: religion and literature. 

         These changes in the faculty resources of Johnston since the last self-study are obviously significant. Having two full-time faculty members and two part-time faculty members in the program has resulted in a number of beneficial changes. Perhaps the most significant change is that Johnston now has four faculty members whose energy is not divided between the Center and their disciplinary home. Additionally, a consistent faculty has offered the program a sense of stability with regard to curricular issues. With Hankin, Townsend, Ogren, and now Salyer, the students are assured a dedicated number of Johnston classes each semester. Moreover, the consistency of Johnston dedicated faculty has resulted in a more regularized First Year Seminar curriculum, with Hankin, Townsend, Ogren, and Salyer on a rotating schedule.

         These changes in the faculty resources of the Center also means that there are now three levels of faculty participation in the Johnston Center: 1) full faculty with contract lines in Johnston, 2) core Johnston-affiliated faculty contributors with consistent commitments to the program, and 3) college-wide faculty contributors who participate in occasional ways (e.g., service on grad contracts and grad reviews). While it is important to identify these three different levels of faculty and their unique contributions to the Center, it is even more important to note that, because of the size and scope of the program, consistent support from all three levels is essential to the most basic functioning and health of the Center. The program is simply too large in student population—approximately 200 students—and too labor intensive for two full-time and two part-time faculty to run on their own. The necessity of total College support will become apparent in the section below.

Duties and Responsibilities of Johnston Faculty 

         As the Johnston Center is a labor-intensive program, the duties and responsibilities of Johnston faculty members are multiple and varied. These responsibilities are part of the general workload of the faculty members with contract lines and long-time volunteer commitments to the program, while occasional volunteers to the program will share in these duties and responsibilities on an intermittent basis. Below is a list of these duties and responsibilities, with particular attention to how the two levels of stable faculty commitment (based on contractual and volunteer commitment) affect their structure, success, and challenges. As this list is part of a reflective self-study, it does not merely describe the duties of Johnston faculty, but reflects on their transformation since the last self-study, the challenges within, and our concerns about and hopes for better successfully fulfilling these important duties in the future. 

I.      Sitting on Contract Committees 

Participating in contract committees, the first step in the Johnston process, is seasonal work, occurring primarily in the fall term and trailing through into March. With such a large program, the number of contracts taking place in the fall is great; over the last two years respectively 54 and 42 students’ contracts have gone to committee. This number is intensified by the fact that for each committee, four faculty members are required to be present (including the advisor), so every fall, those Johnston and University faculty sitting on committees collectively perform 192 hours of contract committee work. The most important aspect of faculty participation in the contract committee is providing a diverse set of disciplines, viewpoints, and resources for our students. 

         The result of these changes to the committee structure, particularly requiring seasoned faculty to regularly sit on the committees, is that for Johnston faculty members—contractual and volunteer—the workload of the fall academic term is replete with many hours sitting on contract committee meetings. This is also true for advisors, who are required to sit on contract committees with their advisees (see section below on advising).

II.    Participating in Graduation Reviews

Graduation Reviews are ritualized celebrations and “defenses” of students’ academic emphases. Like participation in contract committee meetings, participation in graduation reviews is seasonal work, coming in the spring and may terms of each academic year. The number of graduation reviews is similarly high, averaging 43 over the last few years. Again, since four faculty members serve on each graduation review, Johnston faculty provide an average of 172 hours of gradation review work every spring. Unlike the structure of the contract committees, the structure of the graduation review allows the student to choose its committee members, drawing from across the College. While students do indeed draw faculty members from across the campus to support their graduation, for a number of reasons, the burden on Johnston faculty members—contractual and committed volunteers—is high. First, because graduation reviews are celebratory events, students not only choose faculty they work with, they also choose faculty members who are part of their community, faculty they see around the hallways of the Center. Secondly, advisors, who are typically Johnston faculty members, are a central part of the graduation review. Additionally, because May term results in a general loss of faculty on campus, Johnston faculty members who are not teaching a travel course often serve as “fillers” for other faculty members. Finally, for those students who never made strong ties with faculty members, Johnston faculty members help shepherd them through this process. All of this results in graduation reviews occupying a large part of workload for Johnston faculty in the spring and may terms.

III.   Teaching Seminars

Teaching Johnston seminars is one of the primary responsibilities of Johnston faculty. Certainly, it is the number one responsibility of Salyer, Ogren, Townsend, and Hankin, all of whom have primary or part-time teaching commitments to the program. Because Johnston teaching is not only unique at the level of its pedagogical approaches and responsibilities, but also distinct in the ways it builds curriculum, any consideration and analysis of its current practice must take into account both areas.  

         On the one hand, with the new additions of Salyer, Townsend, and Hankin since the last self-study, as well as Ogren’s return to full-time teaching (though as an endowed chair with a five course teaching load), Johnston’s curriculum is certainly quite stable. This stability has allowed the faculty with contracts to the Center to regularize their commitments to the small but central consistent course offerings in the Center (e.g., First Year Seminar and Integrated Semester). We count this as a positive experience. Also, we have the continued support of a number of departments and faculty who prioritize Johnston in their course planning, advising, university service, and other responsibilities. These departments include English, Religion, Sociology and Anthropology, and Art.

         On the other hand, even with a stable faculty in Johnston, the Center continues to feel the effects of being an interdisciplinary program without full and guaranteed interdisciplinary support. While in any given semester the Johnston Center has a number of classes taught by core faculty, these classes are primarily in the humanities. There is no guarantee that there will be Johnston seminar options in the social sciences, creative arts, natural science, and mathematics. Indeed, over the last ten years, there has been very little contribution from the natural sciences and mathematics, (with the exception of Michael Bloxham’s two annual offerings). We continue to analyze and discuss the reasons for this situation.

          This inconsistency of broad interdisciplinary support is the result of a number of factors. Firstly, Johnston curriculum is fundamentally affected by the varying internal demands and priorities of departments across the College. While many faculty members across the campus desire to contribute to the Johnston curriculum, the curricular demands of their home department, sabbaticals, administrative responsibilities, and retirements directly affect their ability to teach a Johnston seminar. In other words, when longtime contributor to Johnston Penny McElroy is on sabbatical, it does not solely affect the Art Department; when Dr. Michael Bloxham retires, it will not only impact Math and Computer Science. Additionally, across the College, faculty have a number of opportunities for interdisciplinary teaching (in Women's Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, Latin American Studies, and Asian Studies), making Johnston only one of several exciting interdisciplinary opportunities. Finally, some departments simply do not prioritize Johnston teaching for their faculty (even though they regularly cite the option of Johnston teaching in their position requests).

         As a result of these fluctuations, some Johnston students are faced with few Johnston seminar choices in their chosen fields, making it necessary for them to take courses outside the Center. In theory, this should not be a problem for our students, as many professors allow their classes to be taken for evaluation. But it is essential to note that Johnston students are often not fully able to contract their courses in CAS classes as they would in a Johnston seminar. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, they are often faced with adjuncts or visiting professors who don’t understand the contract-based system and fail to write student evaluations (denying them an essential component of their transcript). More importantly, for those students whose emphases are heavily concentrated in the sciences, by having to go outside the program to take the bulk of their courses, they are never fully able to experience interdisciplinary learning and course-design—two areas central to Johnston seminars. For example, Johnston has a number of students who have emphases in environmental studies, but there have been only four seminars offered in the last nine years, two of them the same course (The Geography of Wine) and all of them with the same instructor (Johnston alumnus Tim Krantz).

         These challenges are important considerations for Johnston to weigh as it makes decisions about its future and the need for faculty resources. Certainly, one of our goals is to nurture the departments with whom we’ve had a longstanding relationship; another is to continue to program outreach opportunities to bring potential contributors into the Center. But it will also be crucial for us to think about how we can rectify a serious problem of under-serving students in certain areas of interest. We are not satisfied, nor are our students, that the program is more advantageous for students in the humanities. We worry about the fact that our students with emphases in certain fields simply can’t get the same experience in the essential Johnston academic elements of course contracting, negotiation, and design. And we wonder whether or not we need to serve these students better with a dedicated faculty line. Indeed, at the time of the last self-study in 1998, it was both student demand for and lack of student access to a professor of film studies that generated that hire, now filled by Dr. Hankin. Reflecting on teaching has enabled us to realize not only how impacted we are and will be by future changes at the University, but also how essential it is for our students to have more and better opportunities in the sciences and other areas where their emphases lie. 

IV.Curriculum Building and Contracting Classes

As the previous section on curriculum should make clear, Johnston faculty have a major responsibility – both in Johnston seminars and in their departmental and program courses—for the creation, negotiation, contracting and evaluation of courses.

         Like all members of the College of Arts and Sciences, Johnston faculty members acquire advisees through the teaching of the First Year Seminar. Additionally, Johnston faculty acquire advisees through the internal transfer process. Because of the unique character of a Johnston education, advising in Johnston is a major commitment that changes over the course of the student’s four years in the Center. In the freshman year, the advisor is not only expected to help students pick classes, but is also expected to help students figure out the process of course contracting in all of their classes. In the sophomore year, the advisor works with students on crafting their graduation contract. This process is labor intensive. The advisor often holds open meetings for students that serve as a “question and answer” session about the contract process. Two or three rounds of private workshops with each student, in which the advisor helps the student on his or her developing narrative, typically follow up this meeting. This process culminates in the student’s official contract committee meeting. A similar process occurs in the student’s senior year, at which time they rewrite their contract for their official graduation review. At this time, the advisor writes the official “précis,” which is an objective summary of the student’s evaluations. This, too, is labor intensive, as it requires advisors to read through all of a student’s evaluations over the course of four years and summarize those evaluations in a way that is comprehensive while directed toward the outside audiences who will be reading it. When students from the advisor's First Year Seminar do their graduation review, the spring and May terms are extremely demanding, often limiting the advisor’s ability to take on other projects. 

V.   Unofficial Advising and Modeling the Johnston Philosophy 

One of the most important yet unquantifiable duties of the Johnston faculty is unofficial advising and modeling the Johnston philosophy. This is particularly the case for Johnston faculty members with offices in the Bekins and Bekins-Holt complex. Unofficial advising and mentorship can happen in a number of spaces, from the Bekins porch to the Holt Living room, and can revolve around a host of issues, from how to begin the “mural process” in Johnston to the meaning of interdisciplinarity to how to contribute to community in productive ways. In short, simply being on the Johnston complex means that at any given turn, faculty will be asked to help students navigate through the many stages of and issues important to community and academic life. In general, the Johnston faculty is happy to play this role. Indeed, this is what makes Johnston a community and not simply an academic environment.

VI.Attending Community Meetings

Weekly community meetings take place every Tuesday at 4:00 pm, and they are a place in which students and faculty make announcements, discuss community issues, debate school policy, and make decisions about the community’s short and long-term future. While students run the meetings, faculty attendance at these meetings is strongly desired, and it is a tacit expectation that Johnston faculty with lines in the program will attend these meetings. Additionally, many Johnston faculty with long-term commitments to the program regularly or semi-regularly attend the community meetings. 

VII.                  The Johnston community created several committees to organize our collective work in the late 1980s. One of those committees, the Academic Policy Committee, remains from that initiative. In the last decade the APC grew in membership and changed some of its direction. Composed of the Johnston director, faculty, the Johnston registrar, students, and staff, it provided the director with a collaborative forum or working group in which to discuss academic issues, programs and planning; standards; curriculum; resources; programming; University directives; facilities; student concerns; and any topic brought to the APC by anyone. With the dramatic growth and change of faculty in the College, the APC also designed many different kinds of programs for outreach to new faculty, as well as on-going programs to help all interested faculty better acquaint themselves with Johnston. For example, an annual late summer retreat, the Magical Mystery Tour, was regularized by the APC. 

VIII.                Members of the APC have also provided search committees for Johnston positions and a group of peers to review the director and the Johnston tenure track faculty. In the past decade, the following faculty and staff served at least once, and in many cases, annually, on the APC: Yash Owada, Teresa Area, Kathy Ogren, Bill McDonald, Penny McElroy, Daniel Keifer, Kelly Hankin, Julie Townsend, Fred Rabinowitz, Patricia Geary, Sara Schoonmaker, Patricia Wasielewski, Ed Wingenbach, Karen Derris, James Blauth, Eric Hill, Leslie Brody, William Foster, Valerie Gilman, Carlos Arboleda, Matthew Gray, Greg Salyer.

IX.  Sponsoring Individualized Studies

As Johnston students are students who are working towards individualized degrees, they take a fair share of individualized studies (at one point Johnston was actually the Johnston Center for Individualized Study). Sponsoring these individualized studies is one of the responsibilities of Johnston faculty, and though we do not sponsor individualized studies in areas where we have no training or experience, we do attempt to honor the Johnston philosophy by enabling students to follow their own educational paths as much as possible. Depending on the class, the student, and the faculty-student negotiation, sponsoring an individualized study can range from intense shared reading lists and meetings with students to frequent check-ins on students’ progress. At a very minimum, it involves regular meetings with students and written evaluation of their work. Faculty across the University work with Johnston students in this arena. Over the last ten years, Johnston has offered 1859 independent studies.

X.   Sponsoring Classes

Like the sponsorship of individualized studies, sponsoring student taught classes is one of the responsibilities of Johnston and Johnston-affiliated faculty members. This is also a way for faculty new to Johnston to learn about the program. However, unlike the sponsorship of individualized studies, the sponsorship of student-led courses is much more labor intensive. Firstly, faculty must work with the student a semester prior to the class offering to make sure the student is prepared for the intellectual and pedagogical challenges of teaching and evaluating students who are also peers. Secondly, the supervising faculty must participate, in some fashion, in the class itself. Thirdly, the supervising faculty member must help students write evaluations of their peers. Of course supervising faculty will be in regular contact with the student facilitator throughout the term.

XI.  Teaching in the Team-Taught First Year Seminar program (FYS)

Since the last self-study, the Center has made significant changes to the FYS class as described earlier. As a result, the current and highly successful first year seminar structure was born. Faculty with lines and/or contractual commitments in Johnston will regularly rotate teaching this class.

XII.  Integrated Semester Teaching 

Like the First Year Seminar, Integrated Semester is a course that rotates among the four Johnston contracted faculty. It is a course taken for eight to twelve units that allows students to complete projects or studies that are too large to be contained in four- or even six-credit courses. Faculty help students coordinate their projects, plan for their events, and analyze the interdisciplinary nature of their work. 

XIII.                 Faculty Outreach and Mentoring

As Johnston relies on broad faculty support, outreach and mentoring of new faculty (or faculty new to Johnston) is an essential, if somewhat amorphous part of Johnston duties. To be sure, Johnston builds structured times of faculty outreach and mentorship into each semester. This enterprise can take a variety shapes, but since the time of the last self-study has included open APC meetings, invitations to summer faculty retreats, and faculty dinners surrounding a particular Johnston theme. Johnston outreach and mentorship also takes an informal shape: meeting with faculty members to discuss contract writing, contract committees, and interdisciplinary possibilities. Our goals for outreach and mentoring are multiple. We want new faculty to learn about Johnston’s values and educational philosophies. We want to help faculty at all stages in their careers to learn that there are multiple ways and styles of being “Johnston.” And we certainly want to help new faculty learn about course contracts, negotiation, contract committee participation, and evaluations. 

         To a large extent, Johnston outreach is always dependent upon the interest level of new and recent hires. We like to think that interested faculty will find us when they are ready, and we will be there for them when they arrive. But we also realize that in order for our students to successfully achieve their goals, they need to have all professors at the University understand the basics of Johnston: how to work on a contract with a student and what course negotiation means. New faculty need to know this before a student arrives in their classes. Currently, Johnston is given a limited role in the New Faculty Orientation (which is an admittedly overwhelming time). Given the fact that Johnston students will find their way into classes across the CAS curriculum, we believe that it is necessary for Johnston to have more official airtime during this University program. This would not only benefit our efforts at outreach, but more importantly, would help minimize the frustrations experienced both parties when Johnston students turn up in new faculty members’ classes.

XIV.               Writing Evaluations 

The course evaluation is the heart of the Johnston experience, and is the most important document faculty members write. Part of a trio of course documents that includes a student self-evaluation and a faculty evaluation, the course evaluation is a narrative that describes a student's performance in the course in relation to her contract. Typically, course evaluations are two- to three-page, single-spaced assessments of a student's work and unique contributions to a course. To write a course evaluation, a faculty member must review the student's contract for the course, critically evaluate the work done in the course (which typically includes such non-traditional assignments such as co-facilitation and creative expressions), assess the assignments in light of the contract and the learning goals stated therein, and provide an account that sufficiently captures both the student's contractual obligations and performance as well as any other developments that occurred in the course that are not included in the contract (such as unexpected insights, new challenges taken up, obstacles overcome, or changes in outlook). Writing an evaluation for a single student typically takes up to an hour, and with fifty students in a semester, faculty spend an enormous amount of time on this important but difficult task. We believe that the investment of time and energy is worthwhile, but it must be considered a significant element in faculty workload.

XV.                 Johnston Student-Faculty interaction

Faculty contributions to the Johnston community, which are extremely important, are also the most difficult responsibilities to document. Because of the unique character of the Johnston community, participation in these events is often a joy rather than a burden. However, because of the size of Johnston and the spontaneous nature of many of its events, they can be difficult to negotiate alongside a burdensome workload and a family life. It is the Johnston faculty—contractual and long-time committed—who feel this challenge the most. Keeping pace with the many events—music, art, lectures, dinners, research presentation, camping, dance, and more—and desiring to not let down students while finding the time to work and have a life is a difficulty.

XVI.               Alumni Relations  

While the director has typically worked with alumni affairs and continues to do so, increasingly, other Johnston faculty, both contractual and long-time committed, are more and more involved in alumni events. For example, the Vintage Johnston Wine Tasting and Dinner each September involves Johnston faculty at a number of levels, including the monthly planning meetings that begin nearly a year before. Another example is the annual February Alumni Mini-College Symposium where Johnston faculty members participate in workshops and help with planning. And of course every five years, the Johnston reunion is a major event with a high level of engagement from the faculty. 

XVII.              Faculty Development

As several of the previous descriptions of Johnston academic process should make clear, Johnston offers multiple opportunities for faculty to develop new courses, teaching methods, pedagogical and philosophical perspectives. National debates about teaching effectiveness often emphasize the desirability of living-learning communities. Johnston’s long-standing success has been used as a model on campus in the “themed residence halls,” and in Johnston, faculty continue experiment with design, methods, content, and approaches in a supportive environment. Colleagues continue to try out first time courses in Johnston, which are sometimes matched with topics generated through curriculum building. Team teaching has provided an excellent format in which newer faculty has worked with seasoned teachers in Johnston--we are intentionally using this approach to “bridge” the generations of faculty now teaching at Redlands. Our First Year Seminar is one example of this model, but several seminars have also been offered by teaching pairs (McElroy and Geary, Ogren and McDonald, Hankin and Derris, Ogren and Oster, McDonald and Townsend, Wasielewski and Rocque). We also seek links between Johnston courses and College courses, as was the case in May Term 2008 when Dr. Hankin linked her “Slow Foods” course with classes taught by Wendy McIntyre and Mara Winnick. These teaching practices, as well as the more general focus in Johnston on teaching generally, contributes to a lively, contested, and on-going conversation about what happens in the classroom. Johnston continues to offer valued leadership as a site for teaching excellence.

         Because of its organization as a living-learning community, Johnston makes labor-intensive demands on faculty and staff. It also has a hybrid identity, which means it is managed and supervised in part by academic leadership (the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the director, and the faculty) and by the Division of Student Life (the vice president and her residence life staff.) Our enrollments increased from the 1980s to the present, making it difficult for the Johnston director to adequately attend to all of Johnston needs. We restructured our staff accordingly. Student Life also made changes to its lead staff and residence hall that impact Johnston, some of which, for example the designation of student residence life staff members as community assistants, were gleaned from our experience.

         Our most significant staffing change came with the appointment of an associate director for the Johnston Center in 2002. (Johnston alumnus Carlos Arboleda served as the associate director until fall 2007, Matt Gray served as the interim until January 2008, and our current associate director is Deborah Weis who began in January 2008.) Appointment of an associate director enabled the director to better focus attention on student needs, academic and faculty development in Johnston, as well as alumni and development work. Like all positions in Johnston, the associate director’s responsibilities evolve in response to the requests of the director, and in concert with student initiatives. In general, however, the associate director helps the director and the Center through educational counseling; liaison work with the Student Life Division; lead work on some physical plant issues, such as the mural process; programming for health and wellness; leadership on orientation activities and Johnston commencement; curriculum building; facilitation of student leadership and organizational initiatives; supervision of the community budget and coffeehouse. The associate director also teaches one course a semester, serves on graduation contract committees, and sponsors individualized studies.

         The residence hall lead staff has been reorganized several times, and Johnston continues to work on sustaining a relationship with staff appropriate to our living-learning philosophy. We agreed to shift from two live-in residence life staff members (a complex director and complex coordinator) to one, assuming that the new associate director would replace many of the complex coordinator’s responsibilities. Three years ago, Student Life reorganized its residence life structure by expanding the number of residence halls under the supervision of a single complex director. Consequently, Johnston’s complex or area director is now the “west side” director. Accomplished seniors selected to be the residence director (RD) now assume some of the duties formerly provided by a CD solely dedicated to our complex. We also encourage a talented senior to serve as the community intern, in order to facilitate programming in Johnston.

         Johnston has consistently maintained the expectation that our “live-in” residence life staff person will understand, honor and promote our academic and community practices. Sometimes that means that we need to be treated differently than other residence halls on complex. We have usually been successful in helping those hires who are unfamiliar with Johnston to better appreciate our practices, an educational and staff development process that the director, associate director and faculty facilitate. We expressed some skepticism about the most recent change to an area-wide CD, simply because it is more difficult for a CD who has responsibilities all over campus to learn how we function. We have debated the pros and cons of designating a CD solely for Johnston—a question that is still under consideration.

          Johnston’s growth also made significant demands on the Johnston registrar. In additional to general duties in the registrar’s office, Johnston’s registrar serves on all contract and graduation committees; helps individual students with all their contracting questions and mistakes; maintains all Johnston records; helps faculty with inquiries about Johnston process; ensures the collection and processing of all evaluations; provides academic records for all appropriate requests about current and past Johnston students, (for example, academic actions, grade translations, scholarship and study abroad applications, insurance verification); and fields questions from parents and other parties inquiring about Johnston students and alumni. Currently, the Johnston registrar has also served as our representative on the Commencement Committee, and she regularly attends community and APC meetings. Additionally, we are fortunate that our current registrar supports Johnston events. Teresa Area has served as our registrar throughout this review period, and, in recognition of her service to Johnston and the College, was promoted to Johnston registrar in 2006. A second position split between Johnston and the School of Business theoretically supports Johnston, particularly in the time consuming task processing evaluations, though the School of Business has consistently taken most, if not all, of this position’s time.

         Johnston community life is diverse, lively, contested, and difficult to summarize neatly. We can offer a sample of annual living-learning activities most typical of a given year, and then focus on some of the most recent initiatives that illustrate living learning in Johnston. It is much harder to capture the multiple day-to-day relationships that weave together community life.

    The year is shaped by orientation, weekly community meetings attended by students, faculty and staff, fall and spring GYST retreats (get your shit together faculty and student gatherings), community dinners, a December Chilifest showcasing first year seminar work, a May Term Buffalofest, and Commencement. All of these events,(except perhaps Buffalofest), are planned by both faculty and students. We also have frequent performances and presentations in our Java the Hutt coffee house. In the last five years, we have added a “daytime” java, specifically intended to encourage faculty and student interaction on complex. Students organize reading and writing circles both in connection with and independent from their coursework. Presentations of all kinds—from classes, from senior projects, from visiting alumni—take place in Bekins and Holt throughout the year. Every community meeting is characterized by a long list of announcements, (sometimes too long a list), in which students organize their academic and co-curricular activities on and off complex.

Notable examples of successful living/learning projects connected to courses, community, service and activist initiatives include events that grow out of courses, such as Lunafest and the Salon, as well as student designed and painted murals on complex, the CORE (Center for Revolutionary Endeavors), writing circles, and the Johnston Science Collective.

             The Salon has historically been a place for performers, artists, and intellectuals to discuss art, music, dance, politics, and philosophy.  This class revisits the “salon” as a community space to practice and discuss art and ideas. Students in this class design and produce three salon events over the semester. Programs, based on a theme, might include spoken word, visual arts, performance, music, the presentation of papers, etc.  Students in the class present their work as well as produce the programs.  Activities for the class include: choosing the salon themes, soliciting proposals or inviting participants, arranging for the salon space, designing and distributing flyers and other PR materials, attending to media requirements, arranging for the “atmosphere,” and running the program.

First offered as a class in fall 2006, the salon has become a regular manifestation of “living-learning” in Johnston.  The original class put on three salons: Infection, Mythologies, and Reflection/Projection.  The students invited faculty, alums, staff and fellow students to contribute to each program through such varied media as: original poetry or prose, philosophical presentation, film, photography, sculpture, painting, and music.  Unlike a performance or a gallery exhibition, the presentations and art work at the salon are really springboards for discussion of ideas rather than ends in themselves.  Attendees and contributors discuss the presentations and art work in relation to the theme – they might explore the relevance of the theme to their own lives or studies, or discussion might be about the way these themes inform public discourse or politics.

One of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of the salons is to find ways of focusing discussion on the particular theme of the salon without making it seem too much like a class. What really came out of the class was the importance of public discourse and the extent to which students had a hard time achieving it.  All the students in the class and many of the attendees wanted to bridge the gaps between the social, artistic, and intellectual interaction but found that it was far more difficult than they anticipated. 

Since this class, Lizzie Clark put on a salon for her senior project in 2008; and, Mary Beth Brown will put on a community art salon in 2009.  Julie Townsend plans to teach the salon class every 3-4 years as a way of engaging the living-learning community.

LUNAFEST™ is a national film festival that showcases films by, for, and about women. In addition to providing women filmmakers the opportunity to promote their work, the goal of LUNAFEST™ is to raise money for the Breast Cancer Fund and local community organizations. Since 2001, LUNAFEST has partnered with non-profit organizations and college campuses to exhibit LUNAFEST screenings throughout the country.

In 2006, Hankin organized a class around the production of a LUNAFEST event called “Film and Social Change: LUNAFEST Film Festival.” This class attracted a wide range of students from across the Johnston and larger CAS communities, from those with interests in community activism and art for social change to those with interest in women’s health and female independent filmmakers. Members of this class worked together as a film festival production team and organized, publicized, and designed a festival evening for the Redlands’ campus and local community. Because the class put the students at the helm of all components of film festival production, students interfaced with a variety of community organizations, from local newspapers to breast cancer organizations to merchants willing to offer support. Moreover, unlike most film endeavors on college campuses, which typically revolve around individual filmmaking projects, this class asked students to work collaboratively across a number of communities: Johnston and CAS, Town and Gown. This class was thus highly innovative not only for Redlands (indeed, Hankin won the University’s “innovative teaching award” that year), but also for college campuses in general. In 2008 Hankin and students brought LUNAFEST to campus for a second time.

Despite the significant collaborative learning experiences offered by the LUNAFEST courses, Hankin is uncertain whether she will incorporate this event into her future classes. In the fall of 2008, she spent her sabbatical working on issues of corporate influence in higher education, using LUNAFEST as a case study. This study resulted in Hankin reflecting on whether or not she wants to invite further corporate endeavors into Johnston, despite the event’s many positive elements. The Director of Diversity Affairs has demonstrated interest in the event, so LUNAFEST may move from an academic learning experience to a Student Life event.

         Johnston’s physical location is crucially important to this work. The easy proximity of students and faculty in Bekins and Holt means that learning takes place formally and informally all the time. We host contract committees and grad reviews in the Bekins living room, congregate on the porch or in the common rooms, easily visit each other in faculty and staff offices, gather in Holt for the community meetings. We cook dinners in the kitchens, practice music in the music room, and sometimes host classes in the classrooms, although these classrooms are mostly too small and technologically inadequate for most of us. Students also make constant use of public spaces for studying, gaming, hanging out, socializing and sleeping. While other academic programs have common spaces—few must negotiate the demanding alteration between living and learning. Our physical spaces evidence this important but hard use.

         Student voices are heard throughout this self-study, but we also had particular forums for them to contribute. During the May Term Community Study course, we devised a survey to be administered in the fall. The results are included in Appendix P. What follows is another forum that was conducted online by Michelle Deyden (‘’10).

I sought buffalo voices, and this is what I got

Michelle Deyden, Class of 2010

         The Johnston Community- staff, faculty, and students alike- experienced a tumultuous fall semester. We were not exempt from the difficult times our nation faced in the latter part of 2008 as economic hardship touched down on the traditionally shielded world of academia, leading to budget cuts and fiscal conservation. Families were forced to reconstruct modes of living in order to afford the still-rising costs of higher education. Students were struggling to fulfill the demands of a rigorous education with the often more stressful demands of increasing emotional struggles of their respective groups- family, friends, the Johnston community, etc.

         All of these occurrences happened while the Johnston Center was collectively working on this very Self-Study. In the process of compiling this document, questions arose regarding the audibility of student voices in the study and whether the responses to general community questions would reflect the temporary mood of the semester- something members of the Academic Policy Committee were concerned about- or if students would be able to see beyond the term, and focus on the Johnston Center’s core values, goals, and histories.

         In an effort to bring that more expansive view to the document, I wrote a mini-screenplay and posted it online during winter break. Capitalizing on the clarity that time away from the Johnston Community and general academic studies tends to bring, I used the ever-pervasive Facebook- a popular social networking site that many staff, faculty, and students are registered- and waited for responses to the creative nonfiction piece. Also included in the note was a hyperlink to a short video titled “A Vision of Students Today” (October 2007) created by two hundred Kansas State University Students and Professor Michael Wesch. By including the short video, I hoped to provide a contrast between traditional large-university schooling and the education received through the Johnston Center. Please, enjoy the prompt below: the resulting responses-arranged as online thread- by 2 current faculty members, 6 current students(2 first years, 3 third years, and 1 senior), and 4 recent alumni. You will find honest criticism, deep admiration, keen insight, and of course, lots of words because we sure like to talk about ourselves.

Next time we complain about Johnston, about the University of Redlands, about our class

PAUSE.
PAUSE.
PAUSE.

refuse to climb the ladder of assumption.
refuse to place blame on external factors.
refuse to give in.

ASK.
ASK.
ASK.

what do I have to do with all this?
what am I contributing?
what is the purpose of all this?

PAUSE. ASK. PAUSE. PAUSE. ASK.

and think for YOUR SELF.

Tuesday January 6th 2009
imagine: Bekins steps, mid-afternoon, assortment of students & professors walking to and from, close-up to conversation between 2 students--

Student 1: I don't want to go to community meeting. My New Year's Resolution is to never attend another community meeting until people stop being idiots.

Student 2: We're never going to stop being idiots. We're a bunch of 20-somethings attending a small, private, liberal arts college in Southern California who, for yet another idiotic reason, enrolled in some free-thinking hippie college-within-the-college to do whatever the fuck we wanted to and now that we CAN do whatever the fuck we want to do, we fuck it up.
We're never going to stop being idiots.

Student 1: True. So true.

[Student 1 & Student 2 look about. Begin talking about the intricacies of sword fighting and its relation to the global economy with 3 students who just arrived from the Commons. Student 1 & Student 2 return to conversation once 3 students exit to Johnston office.]

Student 2: We're so fucked up. It's like. So fucked.
Student 1: Yeah dude. I guess.
Student 2. I don't know though. Are we? I mean...
Student 1: What?
Student 2: I don't know. It's just. We talk. A lot. We talk a lot of shit.

Student 1: Yeah.
Student 2: And I mean maybe that's why we're always complaining. You know?
Student 1: But we are pretty fucked up.
Student 2: That's not what I'm talking about though. I mean... We're just perpetuating the bull shit by dwelling on the bull shit and thus, we create more bull shit to talk about and dwell on.
Student 1: Fuck. Yeah.

Student 2: It's cyclical. And because we are so in the cycle, it's hard to notice, and it's even harder to get out of.
Student 1: Jesus. Yeah.
Student 2: Fuck.

Student 1: Ok. So. We. Should. Do something about it.
Student 2: But what? I mean. This is like not something one person can change. It's the whole community you know?
Student 1: Yeah...

Student 2: And you know what I hate? When--
Student 1: Stop. Don't do it. We're propelling the bullshit again.
Student 2: Ha! Uh. Ok. Let me think, be a little more hopeful, yet realistic... Ok. Take a look at last semester. Now, really, just think about for a minute. Really think about it. Don't speak quickly and give those answers we always give. Think about Johnston from an outsider's perspective. You know, like an anthropologist or a movie director, whatever role you can imagine and think from that outsider perspective.

Ok. Now. What do you think?

Responses

Julie Townsend, Professor

I think this is great! Come to class, come to community meeting, live and learn on the porch, be the person who makes things meaningful. And, I'm so glad that I don't stand up and lecture 150 students. It's so great to sit in a seminar room with Johnston students and talk about what we think is important.

Walker Roach, Class of 2009

There's always going to be bullshit. The reason people talk about old bullshit is because it's holding up all the new bullshit; we're going to have to get to it eventually to solve problems. The new bullshit is a result of the old bullshit never being fixed. It's a god damn Eiffel Tower of Bullshit. What sucks most is the bullshit will never get taken care of, because nobody wants to make compromises and because we've let consensus and blocking get to ridiculous levels. One person should not be able to prevent the rest of Johnston from being happy when it's not something that will cause them to physiologically convulse on the ground.

I'd love it if this place could be for everybody, but it's not, at least not until everybody can accept some kind of adaptation of Jimmy's original motto for the place. Maybe something along the lines of "I dinna care what you'rea doin', so long as you'rea havin' a good time and not killing me in the process.

Shiloh Drake, Class of 2012

The complaining is a fact of life. The cyclical-ness of the big-issue-meetings seems to stem from knee jerk reactions that could be stopped if -everyone- stops to think before discussing. The one that comes to mind in particular was a section of the living spaces meeting that dealt with fixing up the previously-storage rooms in Holt ourselves so that people could move in faster without realizing that completely disregarding the fact that facilities could probably do a better job than we could, people couldn't move in at all until the beginning of spring semester anyway.

I think Walker's got it right on with "One person should not be able to prevent the rest of Johnston from being happy when it's not something that will cause them to physiologically convulse on the ground."

Kathy Ogren, Professor & Former Director

All anthropologists are participant observers, to one degree of another. Here's some of mine: You are not idiots and community processes are not bullshit. We often need to vent at one meeting before we develop productive solutions at subsequent ones. We build community constantly in formal and informal ways. We are all engaged in learning how to think out loud together and solve problems collectively, which is a difficult skill to learn in a culture that mostly rewards individualistic and/or conformist pursuits. But without learning and re-learning to collaborate--and that usually means we must struggle through some conflict--we cannot forge our unique community. The Living spaces issue represents more progress than current folks may realize. Carlos and I tried to change those rooms over to living spaces about five years ago, and we were told that it could not be done. Buffalo are persistent and endure--roam on!

Michelle Deyden, Class of 2010

Just to clarify, I did not write this as my opinion or something I believed. It was simply a means for a discussion, a means to generate thoughts. I very much enjoy these replies, so please, continue.

Walker Roach, Class of 2009

I hope I didn't imply that process is bullshit, just that we make mountains out of molehills and then start stacking them on top of each other. I do think our process has been hijacked, though. I see consensus blocks being used like ammunition for a toy gun instead of as a last resort WMD sort of thing. And then when an individual chooses to put themselves above the community, the other students get spiteful. They complain outside of the meetings and then some of them decide they don't want to deal with community meetings at all. Then people start to take things personally, it is no longer a conflicting set of ideas but a conflicting set of people. At this point, they stop being community meetings, because the community isn't there anymore.

I had a bit more but these things don't let you write that much...

Nyssa Grazada, alumni Class of 2008

I hate to say this, but the reason why so much has been debated and so little has gotten done in years past is due to a simple factor that you can glean on an anthropological level:

Johnston, currently, is fucking HUGE.

And of course it's harder to come to consensus when there are so many people with so many conflicting ideologies. And in out in the world past Johnston, there ARE a lot of different people with conflicting ideologies- and it shows you how frustrating trying to make a difference can be on a larger level. That has it's good and bad points I suppose.

But the problem of hyper-clicks, the problem of feeling that distance between you and your neighbor, and the problem of NEVER being able to come to a consensus on anything all derives from the same source - and that was that in 2004 - my freshman year, they let in A LOT more kids than usual. And kept doing it.

I would wholeheartedly advocate for smaller class sizes, and I really believe that would fix SO many of the problems Johnston currently experiences.

However, ironically I was one of those kids who didn't go to community meetings, so maybe I could have pitched that idea had I gone =).

No but seriously, someone would have blocked consensus...

Good luck, little Johnstlings.

Paul Kirsch, alumni Class of 2007

Call me crazy, but I miss this dialogue! I would trade my (crappy) salary for what so many Johnstonians consider the "worst" of the Johnston community. I MISS five-hour community meetings followed by seven-hour emergency meetings full of death-defying emotional abyss-jumps on flaming motorcycles. I miss sitting through as many of those meetings as I would walk out on to have a sub-meeting on the porch with someone equally frustrated. I miss looking around a room and reevaluating my stance by considering the expressions on the faces of my peers, engaging in a Shared Experience unseen by yogis in mountain-bound monasteries. I miss the amorphous spectrum of Johnston's shortcomings and successes *every single year.*

Maybe I'm not addressing the issues at hand, and for that I apologize. Maybe someone can gleam sense from it. Suffice it to say I miss this, and I love you all.

Jake Boyle, Class of 2012

Well from a personal standpoint, in the past week or so I've been out of Johnston longer than I have since I got in. I've spent this break with my friends, some of whom I've known since I was 6 years old. And I'm serious when I say that I don't have the same dialogue with them that I do with Johnston kids that I met 4 months ago. I would LOVE a community meeting with some of my friends from High School, it just wouldn't make any difference.

See from what I've seen, even if community meetings don't receive monstrous attendance there is still a culture of communication in Johnston that doesn't exist anywhere else I've seen (case in point: this current discussion). Yes there are flaws, but there exists a dialogue on an individual, as well as a community level, that is unlike anything I have seen or probably will see. There are problems and maybe we'll talk in circles about them, but at least we're talking. I don't know maybe I'm just ranting, but that point of the matter is that I've never appreciated the bullshit more than this past week away from it.

Amy Bowinski, Class of 2010

I think the bullshit is only partially bullshit. And I think that the fact that 200 something odd 20-ish year olds can take as much responsibility that Johnston needs and actually do something with it --- responsibly. I see what you're getting at though.

Thanks for this.

Tony Phonethibsavads, alumni Class of 2008

I'm with Paul. I miss that "bullshit." The fact that people act this way is a blessing in disguise: it only happens because we care about Johnston so much, and things would be far worse if we did not have it.

I'd also like to bring up a point that fellow alumnus, John Grant, brought up at the Mini-College. He mentioned that he believed that paradoxically, the community is most united when it is torn over certain issues (which can include that so-called "bullshit"), and I happen to agree - the community comes together for several hours to deliberate and prove why one side is right. Examples I remember well include smoking on the porch, propping doors, the Johnston rep in the ASUR cabinet, and even a little debate over not buying a TV from Wal-Mart. These are not always pleasant, and people (including me) get angry and frustrated, but we become resilient and negotiate new ways around old problems. Every generation needs a revolution.

Isaac Kandlhoft, Class of 2010

good comments, good discussions.

i think that its totally believable that one person can change everything though

Tony Phonethibsavads, alumni Class of 2008

I agree with Isaac. One person can change everything, however, one person's influence is necessarily limited. The only way for one person to change everything is if that person gains the support of others, and this group takes consistent action to bring about change. Also, let's not forget that the difference between a plan and a dream is a timeline; Johnston is only one community that can support a single person's cause (I don't mean to downplay Johnston by saying "only one"; I'm just saying that there are others beside Johnston, although I don't know of them off the top of my head).

Raging against machines do not change them, and neither do pretty words. For all those who believe they can make a difference, I would just like to remind you that the only way to actualize your vision is to plan methodically and take consistent and productive action. 

         The Johnston Center consistently works with its alumni to maintain and improve our program. Many alumni consider themselves on-going members of the Johnston community. We still face a challenge with some alumni, who remain angry with the University for the closure of Johnston College. For the most part, however, we have successfully built improved relations with all alumni through regional programs, reunions, the Kathryn Green Lecture Series, Coz McNews and Och Tamale, and the inclusion of Johnston in the Centennial celebration. Johnston alumni serve on the Alumni Board and two Johnston alumni, Cathy Ransom (JC ‘87 ) in 1996-2002 and Dave Danielson (JC ‘75) in 2008-09 chaired the Alumni Association.

         Most notably in the last decade, alumni completed the first successful endowment campaign for Johnston, which raised over $250,000 dedicated to “building the Johnston Community.” The fundraising committee, coordinated by Beth Raps (JC ’81) specified that the endowment be used to fund major physical improvements and projects not covered by the operational budget for Johnston. Representative uses of the funds include the purchase of furniture, video players and film screens, renovation of the daytime Java coffee break room space, renovation of the Johnston Music Room, refurbishing the fire pit, program support for February Alumni mini-colleges, and visiting speakers and artists. In addition to the Endowment, Johnston benefits from the Director’s Discretionary Fund, a non-endowed fund that alumni support through annual gifts. These funds are usually spent on student projects, faculty initiatives, curricular and programmatic needs, and some events. Beginning in fall 2007, we developed fundraising earmarked for student projects within the fund through a “Vintage Johnston” wine dinner. Local wine connoisseur John Slater and Bill McDonald conceived this model, and a committee of faculty and staff from Development and Alumni Relations will continue to plan the dinners for the next few years. Alumni funds are used for two primary purposes: the support of student academic research and the building of community. The former includes conference travel and support for senior projects among other things, while the latter includes everything from community building events to furniture and other items that make our environment more community-friendly.

         Alumni also support Johnston through time and talent. Thanks to an annual lecture series endowed by Kathryn Green (JC ‘76), Johnston brings alumni back to the community to give presentations on life long learning. Every presentation is different, but all speakers address the relevance and inspiration of their Johnston education. Over 100 alumni have returned to campus since the inception of the speaker’s series, and we hope to feature many of them in the mini-course workshops at the 2009 reunion. When time permits, alumni also visit classes. In February 2007 and 2008, we organized most of the Kathryn Green speakers into on campus symposia that included current faculty and students. In 2007 the Mini-College focused on “Crossing Common Ground,” and in 2008, it focused on “A Lifetime of Service and Community Activism.” Alumni participation in the last reunions, which we hold every five years, has held strong with 337 in 1999 and 370 in 2004.        

            Several themes emerged from the narrative section of the alumni surveys. Within the survey’s question, there is prompt to identify specific areas for improvement. Below is a summary of these areas of improvement and why alumni feel they are necessary. Many alumni also expressed the life-long benefits of their Johnston experience.

Improvement: “Connecting to the Greater Johnston Community”

While a few alumni express disconnect and disinterest in connecting to the Johnston Community, most consistently express interest in enlarging the scope and frequency of these connections. Alumni make specific suggestions that they believe will help to improve their connection with the greater Johnston Community. In order to define this vague concept—“connecting to the greater Johnston community”—both “connection” and “Johnston Community” can be defined by terms used within these narratives.  The greater Johnston Community includes past and present students, faculty, and staff.  Community “connections” manifest in various manners of contact.  Online, alumni suggest that more connections can occur in chat rooms, emails, Internet groups, an online calendar of local events, a Johnston blog, and social/professional networks.  Other suggestions for online growth include: a website, a listserv, a Johnston MySpace page, scheduled chats, online community meetings, a reunion database, and an entire virtual community.  Alumni also express an interest in real life community through reunions and localized events. Overall, they seem to want more ways to learn about the diverse and fascinating activities of other alumni and easy ways to contact these individuals.  For real life contact they encourage continued reunions, mini-colleges, and newsletters.  Some alumni wish to be more involved and welcome in the reunion-planning process. Many alumni also request more localized, less formal gatherings in various geographical locations (local event for music, talks, alumni speakers, discussion groups).  Overall, improvement is the increase of communication continuity and breadth that will enable alumni to feel a sense of connection with the greater Johnston Community.Here are a few alumni words about how to improve participation in the Community:

·      Yes, I do want to be more involved with the community, but I have been living all over the world and feel quite disconnected…I would love to ask some of them (alumni) about their work..Perhaps I would like some more information on the happenings at Johnston..maybe then  would feel more connected. For example: more updates on events and even current classes, etc.

·      I love the reunions, especially the seminars and inspirational discussions/speeches.  Also, I read the Coz—word for word—even if it takes me a month to get to it. Thank you! For ongoing support of Johnston, I think it’s important to foster local communities…just don’t know how to do it.

·      I have confidence that our younger alums will be more participatory because of the emphasis on community service.

Alumni who have not been involved in the community (or show no interest in future involvement) list the following reasons for their lack of involvement:  distance and traveling difficulty, busy family and work lives, the absence of local gathering, not knowing where and how to participate, needing more time to plan and prepare for events (at least six months), needing kid-friendly events, and an unfulfilling-Johnston experience. One alumnus writes, “Though I like the idea of being more connected and especially with the current/recent students and faculty, my life is so complex and full that I can’t think of how I could stay more connected.” Another writes, “I would participate more if I knew more about what was going on, or how I could participate.”  One writes that he/she teaches to stay connected. He continues, “I don’t do well at large reunions…I always have high expectations of wanting to connect deeply with old friends, but with all the events, it always seems like the energy gets scattered.”

Long Term Benefits of the Johnston Community:

Here is a brief list of some benefits reported by alumni: life-long connections, friends, love, integrity, autonomy, leadership skills, love for life-long learning, Bill McDonald’s seminars, the trip to Greece, learning how to make a difference in other communities.

And some quotations:

So many awakenings happened there for me, not to forget that I met the most significant person in my life.

The trip to Greece and the workshop on Fundamentalism were over-the-top excellent and refueled me to go back into my life and make a bigger impact in community and family projects.

I met my beautiful wife at Johnston in 1970, and so I am eternally grateful that I have an alumni reunion every day.

         At each Alumni Board Meeting, a Johnston subcommittee meets to review and plan alumni support for Johnston, as well as Johnston specific alumni activities. The committee is chaired by a Johnston alumni and supported by the Johnston Director and staff from Alumni Relations. At the most recent retreat in June 2008, committee chair Matthew Gray (JC ‘05) provided this summary of alumni perspectives on Johnston. It points to the ways in which Johnston, in anticipation of the upcoming 2009 Renunion/Renewal embodies several of the themes now emerging from President Dorsey’s Committee for the Second Century planning initiative:

As this year marks Johnston’s 40th anniversary, and we’ve decided to give this celebration the energy of a reunion and a renewal, I set-out during my report to renew Johnston for the board. This theme of renewal is also motivating the work we’re doing as an alumni committee during this coming year.

I found that renewing Johnston for the many on the alumni board who might have had a more monocular view of our Center, was quite easy, particularly following the President’s Panel on the Strategic Plan, which also took place during the weekend. While listening to the vice-Presidents’ discussion of the plan in each of their divisions, that cliché chill went down my spine. Why?

I quickly realized that the Johnston Center is not only meeting the seven core values of the Strategic Plan, but that it’s exemplifying those values. Now, I hope this doesn’t come off as arrogant. This perspective I’m sharing with you comes from the love and the commitment I have for a place that was my home for seven years. How does the Johnston Center exemplify the seven core values? By just looking at the recent spring semester we can see several examples.

1)   “Commitment to Student Success” – Venture into Bekins lobby on any Wednesday afternoon at 4 pm for the Academic Policy Committee meeting. Faculty from across the University, physicists, mathematicians, sociologists, historians, philosophers, business faculty, political scientists, artists, authors, and film studies faculty gather together to discuss policies, programs, pedagogical strategies, and student issues to make the academic and residential life of Johnston Center students stronger, more fulfilling, and even more successful. This is arguably one of the best interdisciplinary mixes of faculty working towards our primary core value.

2)   “Personalized Education” – The first student that comes to mind is Julia Middleton. For her senior project this year she combined her four years of studying environmental issues, photography, and community work. She worked with Brett Martin and local farmers to present a discussion on the needs of buying local food, and the needs of educating consumers about where their food comes from, how it’s produced, and the affect that every bite we take has on other people. By complimenting her academic thesis work with her artistic skills as a photographer, Julia was able to communicate these findings at a community dinner for her peers, prepared with local food and by her hands.

3)   “Integrative Educational Experiences” – Dr. Pat Wasielewski led her third semester to Oaxaca and Guatemala this past spring. I had the opportunity, with Pat, another alumni, and eleven students, to see first hand what such an integrated experience can provide for students. While studying globalization, development, micro-finance, culture, and tourism, students practiced living and learning together. By waking up one morning to read an article on the exportation of cultural values from a weaving village, (an article which we would discuss in class), to waking up the next morning and traveling to that village and speaking with the artisans, the boundaries of integration disappeared. Such a Johnstonian educational experience had profound impacts on all participants.

4)   “Welcoming and Inclusive Community” – I think of Victoria Grubbs, an African-American woman from Alaska, and the first of her brothers and sisters to attend college. Or Lynn Berkely Krantz, who has returned to the Johnston Center as an adult student to complete her college education. Or Cody Unser who has fought a debilitating disease since childhood and is now utilizing her Johnston Center education to advocate and raise money for research for others with this disease. 

5)   “Innovation and Creativity” – Professor Emeritus, Bill McDonald, is currently leading fifteen alumni and five University of Redlands faculty in a collective writing project that focuses on the award winning South African novelist, J.M. Coetzee, and his novel, Disgrace. This groundbreaking book, to be published and released in the spring of 2009, focuses on the integration of innovative pedagogical strategies to teach such a novel and scholarly and careful criticism needed to read such a novel. Few academic publications have tackled such a bridging of these topics.

6)   “Academic Excellence” – I think of graduating senior Monica Barra, (who was accepted like Denise Davis (JC ‘06) to the London School of Economics), Victoria Grubbs (JC ‘08), and Richard Burton (JC ‘09), who all presented papers at a professional humanities conference this spring, earning the respect of college faculty from across the nation.

7)   “High Ethical Standards” – Not only does the Johnston Center hold such standards on a daily basis, the community of faculty, students, administrators, and alumni, seeks to teach others about such standards and how they really work in our world today. Each President’s Day Weekend for the past two years, we’ve hosted a symposium, tackling such pertinent and related topics of “Fundamentalist Religion and Politics” and a “Lifetime of Service and Activism”. The latter of which explored discussions of environmental sustainability, religious service, and identity politics.

The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies is clearly a model for the University of Redlands’ Strategic Plan. As we look ahead to our next 40 years, we look forward to increasing our regional, national, and international attention, attention that will surely assist, if not pave the way, for the University of Redlands’ continued desire to put itself on the map.

Now, let me be transparent. I have not shared this with all of you thinking that you aren’t already aware of many of these elements to the Johnston Center (particularly since many of you have supported several of the programs discussed above). Nor have I shared this to defend Johnston in anyway; I am quite confident that our place in the University is stable and appreciated. 

Instead, I am renewing. I am renewing our desire to think of Johnston as a flagship program. A program that has brought positive attention to the University of Redlands, and a program that could bring a great deal more attention. I look at the University of Redlands with a great deal of pride. I see the newly renovated Banta Center for Business Ethics and the heart and conscientiousness that such a Center brings to the Inland Empire. I see the beginning stages of the Arts complex, which will make the University of Redlands the Center of Arts and Culture in the Inland Empire. And the library renovation, which seeks to make student life facilities more appropriate for our new generation of students, and positions the Office of Diversity Affairs and all of its Centers in their rightful, core and respected place at our fine institution.

But you all know what I don’t see. I don’t see a Center for Integrative Studies represented in a respectable physical plant. It is a Center, which as it turns forty, should not just be a Center for its own good, or for the University of Redlands, but it should be a Center for innovative educational practices around the globe, practices more fit for our new time. To do so, the Johnston Center participants are working very hard, as can be seen above, but we, (and by “we,” I mean the entirety of the University of Redlands community), need a physical manifestation of this hard work in a building that represents the University of Redlands’ commitment to its educational values and mission in a respectable manner.

For several years now, I’ve heard that raising money for such a project would be difficult. That such money would need to come from alumni or from bonds built for a renovation project. But Redlands taught me long ago to imagine. And I don’t think such rutted thinking and rhetoric is imagining the capital campaign that could be. The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, when articulated appropriately, is a critical and inspiring component to the educational vision of the University of Redlands, a component that I believe as many people would be interested in building as they are in the arts, in the math and sciences, and in business.

I have truly admired Neil and his team’s work in the development office since the first alumni board meeting that Char invited me to as a first year student seven years ago. I believe that under their talented leadership, we can all get behind a diverse, multi-faceted, and successful campaign.

Imagine. Imagine the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies: the Center of Innovative Pedagogy and Educational Practices for the Inland Empire, the nation, the world.

I look forward to building this building together. I look forward to the next breaking of ground ceremony at the University of Redlands to be held on that beautiful spot of lawn outside a Bekins window that I’ve been doing a lot of imagining from for years.

         One final example of an extraordinary project that joined faculty, students and alumni in a demanding living-learning project is the creation, writing, and publishing of a collection of scholarly essays about Nobel Prize winning author J.M. Coetzee. Spearheaded by Bill McDonald as part of his “retirement” from Johnston, the project took shape over the last three years. McDonald brought together alumni who had studied with him, as well as some current students and faculty. All participants first worked to define one consequence of Johnston’s learning community, the process of “unsolitary reading” that can shape courses here, with life long consequences for professional and personal work. After two days spent as a discussion seminar exploring the possibilities for the book, participants adjourned to look at the opportunities to incorporate a common text into teaching and reading.

         Coetzee’s controversial novel Disgrace, about contemporary South Africa, ultimately emerged as the central text for our work together. Everyone wrote about an aspect of the novel, and some of us taught the novel in our classes. Bill McDonald and Matthew Gray taught a course on Coetzee in Johnston in fall 2006 as part of the project, and professors Kathy Ogren and Julie Townsend, as well as alumnus Nancy Best, who teaches at California State San Bernardino, attended the class.  The essays will be published by Camden House sometime in 2008-09. The unusual collection, currently called Saving Disgrace can be understood as a “hybrid”—it combines both theoretical and critical analyses with essays grounded in the teaching of the novel. A list of contributors and their essays can be found in appendices. Campus contributors to the collection, McDonald, Ogren, Townsend, O’Neill, Kiefer, and Boobar will present a faculty forum about the project in spring 2009, but we hope that the book will also bring national recognition to Johnston.

         The first Johnston faculty position since the dissolution of the college in 1979 was created because of student needs. Professor Hankin was hired to be a resource for students whose emphases engaged film studies. The integrity of the Center depends upon students being able to fulfill their educational goals, and to offer that opportunity, the University must provide resources for them. Thus, student needs must be met and should be the impetus for new faculty hires in Johnston and at the University. As this document shows, however, the relationship of Johnston to the University is atypical and involves unique demands upon individual faculty and departments. While the University and Johnston have typically worked well together to satisfy the needs of students, increasing pressures on departments in terms of faculty and other resources threaten to affect Johnston's ability to meet student needs both now and in the future. Professors Hankin and Townsend have adjusted loads to meet the unique demands of Johnston faculty as elicited in the previous pages, and Professors Salyer and Ogren have adjusted loads for administrative responsibilities. Functionally, then, Johnston contractual faculty offer seventeen courses per year. Two of these courses are the First Year Seminar and Integrated Semester, and two to three of these courses are in Women’s Studies. That leaves twelve regular seminars (minus any May Term courses) per year offered by the contracted faculty whose areas are film, history, literature, philosophy, and religion. Of course we have other interests can teach creatively in other areas, but we should plan based on our training and scholarship. Over the past ten years, Johnston faculty (McDonald, Ogren, Hankin, Townsend, and Salyer) offered 86 of the 441 Johnston seminars, or 20% of all the seminars. Johnston-affiliated faculty (Blauth, Bloxham, Derris, Geary, Hill, Kiefer, McElroy, Schoonmaker, Wasielewski, Wingenbach, Rabinowitz, O’Neill, and McDonald) taught 57 of these seminars, or 13% of all the seminars. Full-time faculty in other departments in the College and the University account for 239 (or 54%) of the 441 Johnston seminars. The remainder of the seminars (59 or 13%) were taught on an adjunct basis by staff, students with faculty sponsorship, administrators, or alumni. The following chart illustrates these breakdowns.

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         One conclusion here is that Johnston must attract faculty resources from within the University even more so than adding faculty resources from without. Any analysis of anticipated faculty resources must reflect the nature of faculty contributions to Johnston at all levels. We propose, then, a method to determine and attract faculty resources that is comprehensive and encompasses the myriad ways that faculty participate in and contribute to the Johnston Center. At the University level, Johnston will need continued and enhanced support in terms of marketing and resources. It is crucial that Johnston be at the center of the University's strategic planning and tactical resource implementation for existing and new faculty to continue to offer their commitment to Johnston and its ideals and practices. This effort on the part of the University includes everything from putting Johnston at the center of our branding enterprise to a commitment to facilities upgrades and renovations. A robust commitment of the University to Johnston provides an impetus for all faculty share their resources with the Center because they know it is a University priority, not just a nice thing to do for themselves or in the spirit of collegiality. 

         At the College of Arts and Sciences level, Johnston must continue to receive the support it has from Dean Morris. Additionally, we recommend that Johnston have a higher profile during new faculty orientation. Not only will this initiative demonstrate to new faculty the importance of Johnston within the College, it will also provide much-needed guidance to new faculty members who are trying to understand their own responsibilities to Johnston students who may appear in their classes. We further recommend that the College explore ways of encouraging departmental commitments to Johnston. As with the University, if the College itself puts pressure on departments and faculty to contribute resources to Johnston, it provides an impetus that finds its locus in administrative authority rather than in general good will and prioritizes Johnston in the distribution of resources. For example, if all departments who are awarded new positions based on their contribution to Johnston were held to that commitment, the need for new resources within Johnston (new Johnston lines, for example) would be diminished significantly.

         Finally, Johnston itself must work on its own behalf. For our part, we must be intentional about gathering and analyzing our own data. These efforts include the following: 1) analysis of student emphases from the past with an eye toward emerging trends; 2) analysis of departmental offerings in Johnston with an eye toward emerging trends. This simple rubric is anything but. Student emphases must be sifted to separate the short-lived from the more permanent. At the same time, we must recognize that this process is not linear: providing faculty resources even without the apparent demand would create a demand itself. We must ask ourselves if we want to create such a demand and why. The most innovative and nimble institutions do not simply react to existing facts; they also generate new knowledge and ways of knowing. Johnston should take up that role.        

         In terms of student needs and faculty resources, then, we must first assess what those needs are by analyzing the emphases that have been completed and are emerging from the Center. But the analysis of emphases should also include emergent interests, such as human-animal studies, fashion, design, technology, and other sciences. So the process of meeting student needs should entail not only the past but also the future. We should ask what interests are likely to emerge among Johnston students and anticipate those needs as much as possible. 

         Another factor in determining future faculty resources is the participation of other departments in Johnston in all the ways described in the previous section but especially in terms of offering seminars. Johnston has enjoyed support from History, SOAN, English, Creative Writing, Philosophy, Government (but only Ed Wingenbach), Psychology (but only Fred Rabinowitz), Religious Studies, Women's Studies, Business (but only departmental courses taught through Johnston), and now, Art.. At the same time, we understand that Johnston seminars and other work are typically “outside” the work that many departments perform. This fact is borne out by the resource reports commissioned by Dean Morris in 2008 where very few departments integrated Johnston into their plans. While that does not mean that they will not offer Johnston seminars, it does mean that for strategic planning documents, such as this one, we should take them at their word and plan for resources accordingly. While most departments’ commitment to Johnston remains unclear, it is clear that we have current deficiencies that are not likely to be remedied in the future. These include the sciences, psychology, environmental studies, and music, among others. As departments are stretched, they naturally conserve their resources and withdraw from participation in programs that seem to be outside their mission. This phenomenon weakens Johnston by diminishing our ability to meet student needs. As such, we should continue to monitor and analyze departmental participation in Johnston at every level but especially in terms seminar offerings. Conclusions

1.            Short Term: Johnston as an expectation for Annual reports.

We would like the dean to ask each department/program to identify how faculty colleagues plan to provide support to Johnston in their annual reports. It may well be that they cannot promise any classes at all, which is important to document. On the positive side, we would like to know who the colleagues are that express interest in teaching in Johnston so that everyone can make sure sufficient resources are available. For example, if a colleague wants to teach in Johnston but doing so might entail that an adjunct is needed to cover a departmental course, the annual report data would help everyone plan for this scenario. Some departments make sure to count Johnston seminars as electives, and this is a model that might be followed by others.

2. Johnston as a more prominent topic in New Faculty Orientation.

We would like to see Johnston better described and acknowledged in New Faculty Orientation, both in the initial week of meetings, and, more importantly, in one of the follow up sessions for the College. We do not think that Johnston needs a follow up meeting with an exclusive focus on Johnston, but we do recommend that the deans design a meeting along the lines of “faculty teaching development.” That session might be designed with the Hunsaker Chair, and in it new faculty could learn more about teaching in Johnston, travel courses, first year seminar, and May term classes. 

Once a year, preferably in the mid-fall, before course planning gets too far along in the calendar, we would like the dean to ask the Johnston director to spend a portion of a meeting explaining Johnston needs to the chairs and program directors. This could help us recruit more faculty and follow up on issues like late evaluation writing. We will always have our own meetings and dinners, of course, but these often reach only those who are already interested in Johnston. Speaking at the chairs’ meeting helps normalize contributions to Johnston. The director can also provide models about how we work with departments, including provision of resources described as a possible need in our first point above.

We plan to use the Johnston website as a place for colleagues to post the kinds of courses they would like to offer through Johnston. Presumably this will become a discussion board process in which students and colleagues build curriculum. It is certainly a good place to list information that will help colleagues learn how to make and sustain a commitment to supporting the Center. This site is live at http://www.johnstoncenter.org.

We anticipate requests for new positions may still be needed to address our resource needs, particularly in areas of greatest student interest and/or in those areas where “volunteerism” does not meet our needs. We want to strike a balance between maintaining flexibility to meet emerging needs as well as addressing areas where we have the least external support. 

In addition to academic faculty resources, we see an increasingly problematic deficit in technical and computer support. We lack sufficient resources to help the large number of students (in and out of Johnston) who need to learn film editing, for example. Similarly, we have struggled to find physical resources for classes like Yoga, and for Johnston art seminars. Such concerns may seem to be largely facility-based and therefore outside the purview of this document, but when faculty must constantly address these aspects of student learning, it becomes an unnecessary burden on top of instruction. We think it is possible that some of these needs could be met through non-tenure-track faculty, or even residence-life based staff. 

VIII.      Sustaining Johnston

         The sustainability of the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands is important in a number of areas. To continue our tradition of innovation and integration is reason enough, especially given the demise of other innovative programs in the country. American and international students need viable alternatives to standard educational offerings. Our alumni are the best evidence of both the need for and the success of Johnston, and there are future alumni who would have a very different educational experience without a thriving Johnston Center. The existence of the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, not to mention its continued success, is important in its own right. Moreover, the Johnston Center is perhaps the unique feature of the University of Redlands. Other aspects of the University speak to its excellence and uniqueness, but Johnston marks the University as different and is emblematic of its commitment to undergraduate education as well as to innovation and community living  and learning.

Johnston also has a tremendous influence within the University. In an essay for the Och Tamale, the University alumni magazine, President Stuart Dorsey wrote of the “Trojan Horse” effect when Johnston College closed in 1979. He was referring to the fact that Johnston faculty and students were put into traditional departments  where they continued Johnston pedagogical practices, and that changed the University—for the better. Johnston’s influence continues until this day as both academic and student life dimensions of the University adopt and adapt Johnston practices. Futhermore, Johnston itself provides resources to the University by serving on committees, teaching in and supporting other interdisciplinary programs, modeling and practicing team-teaching across the curriculum, and representing the University at academic conferences and in activism and community service.

         Our physical resources are barely adequate both in terms of the most fundamental needs of our faculty, staff, and students and in terms of the pedagogy we practice at Johnston. Maintenance requests are frequent and repetitive (such as with the heating system), and prospective faculty, staff, parents, and students often comment negatively on the state of the facilities. Bekins Hall is fundamentally unsafe in regard to an earthquake and remains unair-conditioned and in need of constant attention. Holt Hall is air-conditioned and more stable, but it is currently insufficient for our population in terms of numbers and pedagogical needs. For example, there is no classroom on complex. Bekins Hall 1 is nominally a classroom, but functionally it remains a study room and, at times, an awkward meeting room. As classroom space across the University becomes increasingly competitive, especially in terms of the demand for seminar rooms (the only kind of class Johnston offers), the need for a Johnston classroom increases dramatically. The administrative assistant must make the argument for Johnston seminar rooms every semester against the demands of other programs who understandably want classrooms that are “smart” and/ or set up for seminars.

         A second and equally significant concern is that given Johnston has effectively achieved its goal from the last self-study of two hundred students, housing and other space logistics come into play. For example, the last two years have seen an increased demand for Johnston housing and more and more Johnston students being unable to be on complex. In 2008 the housing waiting list was over twenty, including a number of sophomore students who were forced to move off-campus or complex because they had lower priorities in the housing draw than upper-level students. Area Director Russ Smith creatively turned the computer room and storage rooms into housing this year to provide slots for a number of new students, but there are not many other options available given the current physical constraints of the facilities. Complicating this issue is an increasing number of internal transfers, students who arrive at the University of Redlands with another major and want to transfer into Johnston. These students are often unique in that they must go through a more difficult admissions process and have a smaller window in which to complete the Johnston experience. We admitted a record eighteen internal transfers both this year and last, but we had to consider housing in our decisions, and we may have to decline admission because of the limitations of our facilities.

An important element of the future of Johnston and its sustainability is its web presence. Launched in February of 2008, johnstoncenter.org is now a viable and vital element of the Johnston Center. Students share announcements and blogs, prospective students and parents ask questions in a forum, and alumni share news and memories. The web site is dynamic rather than static and because it uses and open-source platform (Drupal) that is constantly updated and expanded through modules, the possibilities for the web site are many. More importantly, the site is scalable and adaptable to new technologies and user demands. Johnston’s national and international presence is intimately tied to its own web site.

Our future is tied to the University of Redlands, and so we are invested in the success of the University as a whole. Likewise, we believe that Johnston is integral to the future of the University of Redlands, and we look forward to continuing the strengthen our relationships with all aspects of the University while maintaining our unique approach to living and learning. Higher education is facing serious and new challenges in the coming decade, and Johnston stands ready to meet those challenges with its unique perspectives and practices.

Johnston’s future is bright in part because its past is solid and sound. We have challenges to be sure, but we also have a history of meeting challenges and adapting to the expected and unexpected. We have discussed faculty resources above and will not rehearse those concerns here, but it is clear that Johnston’s future, like its past, is centered on people—students, faculty, and staff. We anticipate that there will continue to be a sustainable number of students who want to be responsible for their own education and choose the Johnston Center as a way to do that. Faculty will continue to desire to collaborate with students who take charge of their education at the classroom and curricular level and will see Johnston, as they always have, as a way to teach differently and develop themselves as scholars and educators. Staff will likewise continue to support community and academic life in Johnston because of its unique challenges and rewards. And of course our alumni will continue to be as dedicated and involved because of the education they received at Johnston. The community will continue to face the issues all communities face, and we will no doubt have the same discussions we have had for forty years. But there will be new conversations as the world and our world changes. At the center of all these changes and dialogues will be our values, especially those that are concerned with the importance of students, learning, and community, values that have sustained us for forty years.

IX. External Review Report

Based on a Three-day Visit, January 26-28, 2009

Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies

Of Western Washington University

I want to thank the Johnston Community and its Director, Dr. Greg Salyer, for inviting me to observe the Johnston Program and thank all those in the community who hosted me as an outside evaluator and consultant in such a warm and friendly way.  The open atmosphere and frank conversation allowed me to form a real appreciation of the many strengths of the Johnston Center and sufficient insight to make a few recommendations by which to improve this unique and worthy program.

I was pleased that I could meet with President Dorsey and Dean Morris and hear first hand their genuine interest in, and support for, the Center and its Programs.  The Johnston Center is a special community of learning and living that deserves strong support from the whole Redlands community.

The distinctiveness and excellence of the Johnston program has increased the visibility and credibility of Redlands University across the nation, helping the University transcend a merely regional presence without undercutting its commitment to the local community.  This philosophy of “work local in order to affect the global; and go global in order to inform the local” is a shared strength of the Center and the University.

As a product of the Higher Education Reform Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the Johnston Center is a rare survivor among the multitude of experimental colleges created at that time – ones that feature integrative study, self-designed learning, and narrative assessment.  Its longevity testifies to the fact that Johnston has been excelling at fulfilling its mission.  There are several other like-minded alternative colleges that have formed a consortium. The Johnston Center would benefit by being a member of this group; and the Center has much to offer these institutions as colleagues in student-centered education.  Membership in the CIEL group (Consortium for Innovative and Experiential Learning) gives faculty, staff and students of each program colleagues with whom to share best practices; it is a source of encouragement and inspiration.  Connection to these like-minded colleges would immediately raise the visibility of the Center (and thereby, that of the University).  The Center would be able to benchmark its achievements with comparable institutions in interdisciplinary teaching and research, narrative assessment and course contracting, self-designed majors, and living/learning communities; all this would reinforce the credibility of the Center.  I urge the President, Dean, Director and faculty to consider Johnston Center membership in CIEL.

The Center has several notable achievements and strengths – ways it excels in fulfilling its unique mission.  It excels at (1) self-designed, negotiated and contracted majors, at (2) narrative evaluation by students of themselves, by teachers of students, and by students of their teachers and courses, at (3) on-going curriculum building, and at (4) experiential education derived from a living and learning community that addresses the whole person.  The “Disgrace Project” is an outstanding example, worth advertizing, of the interdisciplinary and collaborative work of students and faculty at Johnston.

The clarity of values and the feelings of ownership of the program by talented faculty, hardworking staff, creative students, loyal affiliated faculty, and emotionally bonded alums are the source of the Center’s success.  The Johnston community has much to be proud of; the University should be eager to support and promote the Center.

The faculty members involved with Johnston have a heavy workload.  The constant curriculum building, the intense advising, the protracted contracting, the narrative assessing, the innovative classroom facilitating, the community meeting . . . all these add to the normal load professors experience in the rest of the University.  They are exemplary teachers.  They deserve professional development support.

The students of Johnston are among the brightest and creative I’ve ever seen.  They are outgoing and interesting people.  Their academic achievement is, for the most part, high.  And what they learn by living in community, implementing and practicing what they learn in their classrooms, is a great value not experienced by many college students.  They are lucky.  This intense and all-consuming experience creates joys and frustrations that when dealt with during community meetings uniquely prepares them for life in an open and deliberative society.  They are lucky.

The Center does have several vulnerabilities and challenges it should address in order to flourish even more:

1.     It has a very small staff and extremely lean operating budget.  An increase in funding and an additional staff member would help the Center immensely.

2.    It has serious need of up-graded and additional space in order to function well and fulfill its mission.  Renovation of the two halls it now occupies and building connecting multi-use spaces between them is desperately needed to meet safety and educational goals.

3.    The program of the Center is continually vulnerable because it depends on non Johnston voluntary faculty participation in order to flesh-out its curriculum. There is no guarantee of volunteers and it is inefficient to constantly train volunteers. Perhaps the Dean of CAS could encourage participation of all departments in the Johnston program (by allowing participation with the Center to count toward tenure and promotion; offering faculty development opportunities for non Johnston faculty to design courses to be offered through the Center, and so on).

4.    In addition to its tenure track lines in the Humanities and the Arts, the Program should be granted an additional tenure-track faculty position in the Center in a field of science in order to better balance the curriculum; it is uneven.

5.    The faculty of the Program should better articulate a developmental understanding of interdisciplinary studies – integrative, critical, and productive levels – by which to shape its curriculum.  And it might well articulate the differences in interdisciplinary work that occurs within courses and that occurs in the graduation contract (across courses); work that is individually interdisciplinary and work that is collaboratively based.

6.    Basic liberal art skills – like critical thinking, effective writing, and presentation skills (as opposed to content-areas of study) – should be better articulated and rationalized, and then the curriculum and pedagogy should be examined for how they support such learning outcomes.

7.    Due to the recent large turnover in personnel connected to the Center -- Director, staff, faculty, and students – the whole community needs to continue a self-conscious effort to mutually adjust to all the new styles of doing the Center’s business.

8.    The University should consider sponsoring the Johnston Center’s membership in the Consortium for Innovative and Experiential Learning programs (CIEL).

9.    Encourage the timely completion of student evaluations by faculty members; training affiliate and adjunct faculty in the purpose, content, organization, and standards of excellence for narrative evaluations.

10.Require a Johnston-seasoned faculty member on each graduation contracting committee.

11.Consider the long-range advantage of moving to electronic portfolios of student work and electronic evaluations from which to more easily compose Johnston style student transcripts.

12.Better articulate the capstone integrative experience for students at the end of their programs of study in Senior Projects related to graduation contracts and in Integrative Summary and Evaluation by the student of his or her whole undergraduate learning and living experience at Johnston.

13.Explain to students the inter-relation of independent and collaborative work in the Johnston model of education.

I’ve learned some useful ideas from the achievements of the Johnston Community -- the Center and its Program.  Thank you for the opportunity to be part of your on-going attempts to perfect what you do, already so well.

X.   Response to the External Review

 Response to External Reviewer’s Report
March 8, 2009

The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies was visited by Roger Gillman, Dean of Fairhaven College at Western Washington University on January 26-28, 2009 for an external review of the Johnston Center’s self-study. His report precedes this response. We are grateful to Dean Gillman for his insight, candor, and good will and count ourselves fortunate to have found an excellent evaluator and also a new colleague.
            We agree with Dean Gillman’s assessments of our needs for staff, faculty, and facilities. Our administrative assistant and registrar are clearly overworked and their salaries and support are commensurate with other employees with the same title, but there is little or no recognition that their work is unique because it is done in the context of the Johnston Center; therefore, their salary and support are not adequate for their tasks. We will continue to push for recognition of the unique roles and duties of our staff. Recently, we were able to upgrade the associate director position through a position description questionnaire. This would seem to be the best approach for the administrative assistant as well, and we will complete the questionnaire once she has completed a full year at the Center and can adequately assess the role and her unique contributions to the position. The Johnston registrar was also upgraded in the last few years, but her situation is more complex because she is an employee of the Registrar’s Office. We will continue to attempt to align the work of the Johnston registrar with salary and resources that are appropriate for her position.
            In terms of College faculty participation in Johnston and the addition of a faculty line in science, we agree that both are on-going concerns in the Center. We regularly monitor the offerings of Johnston seminars by faculty in the College, and note that sabbaticals and other contingencies have a direct impact on the myriad ways faculty interact with the Center. Recent initiatives by the dean charging departments to make their curricula more efficient and to make the Liberal Arts Foundations requirements fewer and more salient could pose a threat to Johnston resources, but all indications are that these are exercises designed to promote, not diminish, interdisciplinary studies in the College. The outcome of these endeavors is as yet undetermined, but we are optimistic about the role Johnston will continue to play in the College and the University and that providing resources for us will be a priority. An additional faculty line would enhance our offerings and advising tremendously and is much needed.
            After receiving the report, we have begun discussions of how we view interdisciplinarity within the Center and how we might sharpen our focus on the liberal arts. We discussed in APC how we might provide more support for students in the sophomore year who are writing contracts and analyzed the Fairhaven model where each sophomore takes a year-long course with his or her peers and write their contracts together. While we are reluctant to add a required course for Johnston students, we recognize the value of the Fairhaven model and are considering using GYST: The Class or some other vehicle as a way to provide support for students writing contracts. Likewise, we will continue to examine how we might better articulate and represent the skills developed in the Johnston Center. While we recognize and embrace the value of the traditional cluster of skills related to a liberal arts education (critical thinking, effective writing, persuasive presentation, etc.), we also want to allow our students to teach us the skills they are developing by being responsible for their own education. These might be responsibility, creativity, negotiation, institutional analysis, and—the paramount outcome of a liberal arts education—freedom. Completion of evaluations is a perennial issue and one that needs constant monitoring and creativity in addressing. The dean recognizes the problem and will continue to support all efforts to make this important element of a Johnston education a priority for all faculty. We will also continue to monitor the quality of the evaluations through the diligence of the Johnston registrar and the director. It is our practice to have a seasoned Johnston faculty member on each contract committee, as Dean Gillman suggests, though we have not codified that practice anywhere for a variety of reasons. We will also continue to find ways to articulate how our students carry out and learn from their summative projects, which are not capstones per se but take the form of research, art exhibits, salons, student-facilitated classes, and other unique and innovative projects. Likewise, we will continue to explore ways to discuss and practice the dynamic of independent and collaborative work in the Center, such as balancing independent study with curriculum building, fostering individualized study while finding avenues for collaboration and public presentation, and maximizing faculty resources while supporting students’ unique educational pursuits. Electronic portfolios will also be on our agenda for discussion. Now that we have our own web site, this is a possibility like never before and holds some promise. We will, of course, want to hear from our students especially about this suggestion. These discussions will continue in APC, the community, and the classroom as they always have, but the report has helped us to ask these questions in new ways and has therefore advanced the discussions.
            The Center has indeed experienced dramatic shifts in personnel in the last two years with a new director, associate director, administrative assistant, and area director. Transitional issues, therefore, continue and will continue for at least some time since our newest member of the staff has been here only three months. We are confident, however, that these transitional issues will be abated by the good will and collegiality of everyone involved and by the nature of our community itself, which is larger than any one person or set of issues and has a life of its own that carries us forward together whether we want it to or not. We do want it to, though, and so we are optimistic about the new Johnston and the possibilities that will emerge from the ever-changing community. Future personnel changes should be seen as opportunities to establish or maintain processes that ensure the most effective community involvement to achieve the best fit for the Center.
            Both President Dorsey and Dean Morris have indicated that they support Johnston’s membership in the Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning, and the director has begun the application process. We look forward to learning from the Consortium schools and centers and offering our own insights in the annual conference and other programs of the Consortium.

A.   Admissions Data

B.   Hard Travelin’ and Still Havin’ a Good Time

C.  Johnston Seminars and Individualized Studies

D.  Ten Year sample of Graduation Contracts

E.   Off-Campus Study Form

F.   Johnston Study Abroad Enrollments 1998-2006

H.   Annual Review of Johnston for the College Dean

I.      CozMcNooz

J.    List of Kathryn Green Lectures

K.   Table of Contents and Description of Disgrace book

L.   March 2003 Report to WASC

M.  Integrated Semester Application

N.   Contract Committee Cover Sheet

O.  Comments on First Year Seminar from Current Students

P.   Student Survey for Self-Study

Q.  Matt Gray’s Study of the Johnston Community

Admissions Data
Appendix B

Hard Travelin’ and Still Havin’ Good Time

·      Buffalo Chronicles
Kathy "Coyotess" Ogren

·      The Obligatory Inspirational Commencement Address
Barney Childs

·      Teaching and Learning in the Community

·      The Redlands Hook
Nate Budington (JC '79)

·      Teaching at the Center
Bill McDonald

·      Teaching "Religion and Hate" in the "Global Village"
Fran Grace

·      Advising at Johnston
Kevin O'Neill

·      Contracting and Community
Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann (JC '76) & Reverend Nurya Lindberg Parish (JC '92)

·      Old Dogs and New Tricks: Johnston and the College of Arts & Sciences
Nancy Carrick

·      Writing and Animal Studies
Graduation Contract - Rebekah Driessen

·      Literary & Philosophical Discourse
Graduation Contract - James Boobar

·      Readership: Literature, Libraries, and the Academic Encounter
Graduation Contract - Jeremy Donald

·      A Community of Artists

·      Drawing out Creativity
Penny McElroy
Adam Chapman ( JC '94)
Seth Kroeck (JC '93)
Jeff Wilson (JC '93)
Rebecca Bednarz (JC '01)
Emily Wick (JC'00)
Erica Poellot (JC '97)
Ian Fearn (JC '99)
Jana Wilcoxen (JC '91)
Heather Delaney (JC '99)
Tanya Doriss (JC '01)
LisaBeth Robinson (JC '91)

·      After an Image by Dorothea Lange
Rebecca Bednarz (JC '01)

·      Writing at Johnston? What Does That Mean?
Joy Manesiotis
Gary Hawkins (JC'91)
Gayle Brandeis, (JC '90)
Patricia Geary
Amy Williams (JC '90)
M.G. Maloney, (JC '03)

·      Self-Portrait Out in the Open
Gary Hawkins (JC '91)

·      Always a Drama Somewhere on Complex
Daniel Kiefer

·      Johnston and the Theater Program
Chris Beach

·      Music at Johnston
Neil Sattin (JC '96)
Michael Padilla, (JC '02)

·      Shroud
J. Ely Shipley (JC '00)

·      Art and India
Graduation Contract - Seth Kroeck

·      The Arts and Social Change With an Emphasis in Ceramics
Graduation Contract - Margaret Allshouse

·      Ob La Di
Sandy Fredricksen (JC '03)

·      And Don't Forget the Roughage
Commencement Address - Leslie Brody

·      Community on Campus & in the World

·      The Johnston Community
Yasuyuki Owada

·      Living and Learning with Student Life
Noah Wardrip-Fruin (JC '94)

·      Johnston and Activism: Dewey in Practice
Kevin Whelan (JC '93)

·      Not Just Your Father's Johnston: Feminism Permeates the Center
Patricia L. Wasielewski

·      The Post T-group Era at Johnston: The Fire is Still Alive
Fredric E. Rabinowitz
Greg Van Hyfte (JC '99)

·      Johnston Center and International Study
Melissa Jameson (JC '90) & Marjorie Singer (JC '93)

·      An International Student in Johnston
Mika Tamura (JC '00)

·      Negotiating an Embedded Culture
Claudia McCabe (JC'02)

·      Johnston: The Lone Ranger of Alternative Ed
Marjetta Geerling (JC '95)

·      Havin' a Really Good Time in Johnston: The Party Scene
Autumn Nazarian (JC '98)

·      Johnston Rituals
Eric Hadley-Ives (JC '90)

·      Social Change, Sustainable Development, & Peace Studies
Graduation Contract - Lisa "Lily" Marie Gomez

·      Cross-Cultural Learning & Community Building in Johnston
Sadath Garcia, JC '03

·      Life After Johnston: Community & the World

·      The Road to Kosovo: Personal Reflections on Community Service, the Johnston Center, and War
Kathy Quast Morris (JC '92)

·      Community Service, Class Privilege and Personal Responsibility
Tanya Doriss (JC '98)

·      Alumni at work: Raising Money for Johnston Center
Nancy Best (JC '81)

·      Kathryn Green Talk
Ann C. Diver-Stamnes (JC '77)

·      Life After Johnston
Kathryn Green Talk - Chris Fullerton (JC '90)

·      Life After Johnston
Kathryn Green Talk - Noah Wardrip-Fruin (JC '94)

·      The Ways of the Mystics: Johnston Education and the Sacred Quest
Kathryn Green Talk - Heather Kinnear (JC '95)

·      I'll Take the Low Road and You'll Take the High Road: Aesthetics, Politics and Spirituality in the 21st Century
Kathryn Green Talk - John Walker, (JC '84) & Bradley Butterfield (JC '86)

·      Culture and Social Change: Latin American Perspectives La Cultura Y el Cambio Social: Perspectivas Latinamericana
Graduation Contract - Melissa Penn Jameson

·      Graduation Talk
Kevin O'Neill & Bill McDonald
Appendix C

Off-Campus Study Form
Appendix F

SEMESTER/YEAR	ACADEMIC PROBATION	ACADEMIC WARNING	DISQUALIFIED
Spring 1996	4	2	0
Fall 1996	2	4	2
Spring 1997	1	2	0
Spring 1998	4	5	0
Fall 1998	4	5	0
Spring 1999	11	4	1
Fall 1999	14	7	0
Spring 2000	6	7	0
Fall 2000	5	2	1
Spring 2001	2	2	0
Fall 2001	4	1	0
Spring 2002	1	8	1
Fall 2002	3	1	0
Spring 2003	2	5	0
Fall 2003	4	3	0
Spring 2004	4	4	0
Fall 2004	5	6	0
Spring 2005	5	2	0
Fall 2005	9	4	0
Spring 2006	9	0	0
Spring 2007	5	3	0
Fall 2007	6	3	0
Spring 2008	9	2	0

Annual Review of Johnston for the College Dean (2008)

It was an interesting, challenging, and successful year for the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies. We began the year with a new director and area director, lost our associate director the first week of the semester, and hired a new one in January. We also launched a new, interactive web site, effectively transitioned between administrations, and inaugurated a unique fundraising event, the Vintage Johnston Wine dinner. In addition to adapting to changes and meeting challenges, we continued our forty-year tradition of offering a radical vision of undergraduate education for our two hundred students. All in all, it was an unusual but successful year.

Students and Faculty: 

See the “Johnston Index” in the appendix to this document for an overview of the following numbers. The Johnston Center enrolled 44 new and transfer students in fall 2007 and graduated 42 students in May 2008. We also brought in 18 internal transfers, which is double our usual number. Only 2 students from the first year class withdrew, and one of those is returning in the fall. Our enrollment for fall semester of 2008 is just over 200, which is also the target number set in our last self-study. We continue to have very good results in admissions and retention. For example, our honors admits increased significantly while they were falling across the college, and our retention rate is extremely high. Johnston now graduates the third-largest number of “concentrations” or majors in the College.

During the 2007-08 academic year, we offered 53 seminars and 169 individualized studies (Fall: 16 seminars and 57 individual studies; Spring: 24 seminars and 64 individual studies; May Term: 13 seminars and 48 individual studies).  We held 42 contract committees and completed 42 graduation contract reviews during the year. Our entering class is 40 new students with 5 transfers, and our First Year Seminar will be taught by Greg Salyer, Kathy Ogren, and Ben Aronson.

Johnston seminars continued to reflect our commitment to interdisciplinary education and negotiation between students and faculty members and to the broad array of faculty who constitute Johnston. University faculty outside of the Johnston 4 offered 30 of our 53 seminars, and we had 15 courses taught either by students or by a faculty-student team.  In addition to these full time faculty, 4 adjuncts, including the associate director, the area director ,and the administrative assistant, taught 11 courses. Our unique and innovation version of the First Year Seminar was further perfected in its new offering. Professor Townsend taught the course with Professors James Krueger in philosophy and Jacob Ristau in art. That over half of our seminars were taught by faculty in the College reflects a significant commitment to the Center. Colleagues in religion, English, sociology, art, philosophy, and the sciences have demonstrated their commitment to Johnston by regularly offering seminars, advising students, and serving on contract committees. Other faculty contract with our students for their courses and take on the extra work that contracting and evaluations entail. This is the kind of support Johnston depends upon to continue to succeed.

Professor Townsend continued to be highly engaged with teaching, research, and service. Julie developed two new interdisciplinary seminars: "How to Play with Others” (a First Year Seminar) and "Multiplicities." In terms of scholarship, Julie organized a panel titled “Difficult Journeys” for the American Comparative Literature Association in Long Beach, in April and presented a paper titled “Improvisational Aesthetics” at the Modernist Studies Association Conference, also in Long Beach, in November 2007. In terms of service, Julie served on two search committees (Johnston associate director and philosophy), the Proudian Selection Committee, the Visual and Media Studies ad hoc Investigatory Committee, and worked on the faculty housing and childcare initiative. She also presented a two-hour long workshop for Johnston students on graduate school with Professor Salyer. Julie continues to sponsor a French conversation group as well.

Professor Hankin continued to offer innovative courses in film studies and created a new course reflecting her emerging interest in food and culture titled “Slow Food: History, Theory, Practice.” In the latter course, offered in May Term, she collaborated with Mara Winick’s BUS: the business of food, Mariana Altrichter’s EVST: Green Living, and Candy Glendening’s CHEM: Mother Earth Chemistry. In terms of scholarship, Kelly published  “Documentaries About Women Filmmakers as Feminist Activism”  in the NWSA Journal 19.1 (Spring 2007): 59-89. She presented a conference paper titled “Yes, But Can They Play Straight?: The Self-Fashioning of Lesbian Actresses” at the Screen Studies Conference, University of Glasgow, July, 2007. Kelly contributed significantly to the University in a number of ways this past year. She was the Co-coordinator (with Leela MadHavarau) of the Lunafest Film Festival, and she coordinated the Loft Film Series Celebrating Gay Pride for the Redlands Community in June. Kelly served on the University Assessment Committee, Tenure, Promotion and Appeals Committee, and the Annual Faculty Retreat Planning Committee. She also served as a faculty mentor. And in terms of interdisciplinary service, Kelly was on the Proudian Honors Selection Committee, the Women’s Studies Advisory Committee, and the Visual and Media Studies ad hoc Investigatory Committee.

Professor Ogren team-taught Johnston seminars titled “Golden Ages” with Professor Emeritus Bill McDonald and “The Sixites” with Professor Sharon Oster. In terms of scholarship, Kathy contributed a section on jazz to the  Encyclopedia of American Urban History, ed. David Goldfield, Sage Publishers, 2007.

Kathy served on the following committees: ean's Advisory Committee, Women's Studies Advisory, Reunion Committee, and the President's Second Century Planning Committee. She also serves as the Virginia C. Hunsaker Distinguished Teaching Chair. In addition Kathy was invaluable to the transition between Johnston administrations. She mentored the new director weekly (often daily) and provided much-needed stability in a year that was rife with change. Her good will and leadership, always hallmarks of Kathy’s service to the University, were especially welcome and effective this year.

Professor Salyer taught his first Johnston seminar, titled “Gods and Monsters: Understand Power,” in the fall semester. In the spring semester, he taught Johnston’s Integrated Semester course, and in May Term he taught Community Study. Greg presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Southern Humanities Council, and he serves on the Executive Board of that organization. The paper was titled “Blogging My Way Home: A Sacred Odyssey on the Road and on the Web.” He also was a panelist with three Johnston students for “Transgressing and Transcending Institutional Boundaries: The Johnston Center as a Living/Learning Community.” In terms of service, Greg chaired the Associate Director Search Committee and served on the Painting Search Committee. He also served on the Dean’s Advisory Committee and the Student Life A-Team. Professor Salyer also submitted a proposal for a new, interactive Johnston web site, which was approved by IT and University Relations and implemented in February. Currently, Greg serves as the webmaster as well.

Pat Wasielewski’s Oaxaca Integrated Semester course took a dozen students to Mexico and Guatemala for a semester and included two Johnston alumni who served as community support staff. Johnston funded these staff positions from its own budget and with great success. Not just another study abroad course, the Oaxaca Integrated Semester involves opportunities for unique experiential learning that is a result of Pat’s contacts she has developed over the years. I was able to see the course first-hand and even teach a class there, and I can say that it is one of the best courses I have seen anywhere. Students were presented with innovative and unique opportunities at every turn, and the living/learning connection took on a new dimension with travel in another country. The community that developed was remarkable, and the presentation made in May Term, while wonderful, only scratched the surface of what happened in Oaxaca that semester. We count this as one of most successful courses and will look to repeat to the alumni dimension as well.

A notable project at Johnston that involves Professors Ogren and Townsend, various alumni, and Professor Emeritus Bill McDonald is a publication on Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace. Emerging from a McDonald seminar on the novel, the project is an anthology of essays on the novel from various perspectives, including that of Johnston pedagogy. The manuscript is being reviewed by Camden House publishers at this writing in light of publication before the movie version of the novel appears and before the Johnston 40^th Reunion. The Disgrace Project is exemplary of the integration of scholarship and pedagogy, students and teachers, alumni and staff that is the Johnston Center. I look forward to writing about its publication in the next Annual Report.

Professors Ogren, Townsend, Hankin, and Salyer all served on the Vintage Johnston and Reunion Planning Committees and participated in the February Symposium “A Call to Service.”

The Academic Policy Committee:

All four Johnston professors served on the Johnston Academic Policy Committee (APC), which is functionally the Johnston “department,” though membership is drawn from all across the University. In addition to the spontaneous discussions usually afforded in the committee, the APC did the following work:

·      Interim Associate Director Position (hired Matt Gray)

·      Self Study (numerous meetings to discuss various elements)

·      Web Site (discussed issues related to a new interactive web site)

·      Director's Discretionary Grant (awarded sixteen grants to Johnston students doing unique research projects)

·      Community Service (discussion of how to expand our understanding)

·      Abstracts for Contracts (a discussion of changes to the Johnston process)

·      Associate Director Search (hired Deborah Weis)

·      Began Dean's Report on Resources

·      Consensus on dean's appointment (wrote a letter reflecting our consensus on the appointment of the dean)

·      Space Issues (discussed issues related to seminar rooms and other space issues)

·      Integrated Semester (analyzed the Integrated Semester course and made appropriate changes)

·      First-Year Seminar (analyzed and made appropriate changes)

·      Student-Facilitated Courses (analyzed and made appropriate changes)

·      Completed Dean's Report

·      Faculty Retreat (planned)

Membership of APC for this year included: Kelly Hankin, Julie Townsend, Kathy Ogren, Fred Rabinowitz, Deborah Weis, Teresa Area, Tiffany Lunt, Patricia Wasielewski, Sara Schoonmaker, Karen Derris, Penny McElroy, Patricia Geary, Daniel Kiefer, Eric Hill, Jim Blauth, Matthew Gray, and Greg Salyer. 

The Center continued its work on its self-study. Kathy Ogren, working in concert with the APC, wrote an initial draft of the self-study over the year. The fall faculty retreat will be the occasion to revise and expand this draft according to discussions and data that emerge from our continuing work. Our plan is to complete the document in the fall in time for a visit in December.

            Interim Associate Director Matt Gray provided much-needed continuity, assistance, and good counsel for the fall semester. He archived much of the work of the previous associate director and facilitated the transition to the permanent associate director with professionalism and good will.

Associate Director Deborah Weis joined the Center in January and quickly learned the subtle dynamics of our living/learning community, gaining the trust of students and faculty alike as she dealt with numerous issues related to counseling and community life. Deb eagerly took on the tasks of associate director, even before she was asked to in some cases, and has already become a vital staff member. She took on the GYST class in her first semester without being asked and sponsored a number of individualized studies in communication and wellness. One of these studies culminated in a community wellness dinner at the end of the semester that was well-received by everyone. She also taught the Community Study class with Greg in May Term. Deb sponsored the Portuguese Club as well. In terms of service, she assisted with commencement planning, managed the community budget, attended senior management meetings in Student Life, facilitated spring GYST, handled internal transfers, facilitated the mural process for a number of students, worked with the JPC, and observed and sat in on a number of graduation reviews.
             In her third year as Administrative Assistant for the Johnston Center, Tiffany Lunt served the Center in exemplary ways. It was Tiffany who felt the impact of a new director and the lack of an associate director the most, and she met these challenges with her usual efficiency and grace. Tiffany was the continuity students needed between administrations, and she mentored both the new director and the new associate director while effectively handling the enormous amount of tasks involved in running the Johnston office. Tiffany is to be especially commended for her work this year. The Center was successful in this transition year in large part because of her.

Faculty and staff participated in DecemberFest, Admitted Students Day, Commencement and many other programs.

Notable Programming and Student Accomplishments in the Johnston Center:

            The Johnston Center practices living-learning programming on a daily basis, thanks to the combination of academic and residential spaces in the Bekins-Holt complex.  We would like to mention a few of the programs that best demonstrate the range of our activities.               

            Thanks to our operations, community, Director’s Discretionary Fund, and Endowment funds, Johnston supported many campus wide programs, including poet in residence Paul Zarzyski, the Science Fiction Symposium, and programming in Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology, Women’s Studies, and Diversity Affairs. We contributed to the Redlands Review and aided in their efforts to bring writers to campus.  We supported student participation at a number of campus events and conference.  We sponsored our annual Buffalofest as well as a number of programs originating in Johnston. In February we offered a university-wide symposium on “The Call to Service” that involved numerous alumni, faculty, staff, and students, including a presentation by President Dorsey.

            Students are, of course, at the center of all we do, and Johnston students had a tremendous year. Three students presented papers at the Southern Humanities Council annual conference in Knoxville, TN. Monica Barra and Victoria Grubbs presented “Home: A Dialogue” while Ricky Burton presented a paper titled “Rereading Leslie Marmon Silko.” Both papers were developed in Johnston seminars and revised for presentation at the conference. In addition the students presented a panel on Johnston as a living/leaning community with Professor Salyer. Brittany Johnston completed her documentary “Little America” about truck drivers with the help of a Director’s Discretionary Grant. Rebecca Cigan won the IES Writing Contest with her essay on sex workers in Amsterdam. Four students were elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Iyan Sandri, Jesse Seamon, and Chava Weitzman presented their research projects at the 33rd annual West Coast Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference (WCBSURC) at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego in April.  Iyan gave a poster titled "Characterization of rhizobia for Joshua Tree restoration."  Jesse gave a talk titled "Molecular investigation of cadmium uptake and sequestration in the Zn/Cd hyperaccumulator T. caerulescens", and won a prize for best talk in his session. Chava gave a poster titled "Conservation in the Bale Mountains National Park:  a statistical analysis of population trends of Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis) and human influences (2001-2007)."

            The Kathryn Green lecture series brought artist Carla Goldberg to campus for an exhibit and discussion of her art. Carla also curated the first Redlands alumni show in living memory, and the artists in the show were approximately a third Johnston Alums—some who have not been "found" until she went looking for them. Tom Bowman, a major figure in the dialogue on climate change, offered a lecture on the topic in Bekins.

            We continued our 2009 reunion planning.  Led by co-chairs Kathryn Green and Ben Cook, we met regularly during the year and have things well in hand for the 40^th Renewal.  The Johnston fundraising committee sent two appeals during the academic year, one general appeal and a special appeal related to Vintage Johnston. Alumni began to use the web site as we had hoped and are sharing news and ideas for strengthening Johnston.

The Second Annual Vintage Johnston Wine Dinner will take place on September 27, and we hope to bolster the Director’s Discretionary Fund again as well as provide a venue for good food and conversation for the University and the community.

            Vintage Johnston and the two appeals added to our Director’s Discretionary Fund.  We are disappointed, of course, that our building needs have still not been addressed. While we understand the vagaries of construction costs and debt structuring, our students, faculty, and staff continue to suffer from poor facilities and from the consequence of that in terms of how we are regarded within the priorities of the University. Our hope is that the administration will commit to putting Johnston on the list as the next major renovation, regardless of how long that may take. Knowing where we stand in the renovation schedule would be extremely helpful as we imagine the future and deal with our limited physical resources.

The Area Director for the West Side, Russ Smith, has been an asset to Johnston, and we are happy to have him working with us. But the problems from the past remain; namely, Russ is stretched too thin to provide Johnston the resources we need in this area. The other dorms are important, but they are not living/learning communities like Johnston. We need, therefore, more presence from Residence Life staff in the community, but given Russ’s numerous responsibilities across campus, he can provide only so much, though his attempts to give Johnston what it needs are laudable.

Facilities Management worked with us fairly well over the year. There were notable lapses in communication from their office, but there were also very good efforts made in this area by Al Valdez in particular. Our mural process worked well again, and we collaborated with Facilities Management on this issue. Notable here is Deborah Weis’s and Russ Smith’s efforts to improve fire safety in Johnston. We had two meetings with Risk Management and Residence Life staff and implemented a model program for doing fire safety checks that involves a preventative safety log and a binder of all memos received and actions taken in response. Russ and Deb have recently received commendations from the public health and safety officer for these initiatives.

A case in point about our building needs: in the spring semester, a noxious smell began emanating from the radiators in Bekins. Facilities had to spend several weeks on finding a solution, and we are still not sure they did. Incidents like these are endemic to an old building and underscore the need for a new one. Space will not permit me to mention all the recurring problems of the buildings, but they are numerous and including water and safety issues.

We also continue to have difficulty scheduling seminar rooms. Since every Johnston course is a seminar and many involve unique pedagogical approaches, space becomes especially important for us. We fear this issue will become worse as we lose classroom space during campus renovations.

Planning for 2008-2009:

            Next year we may lose our administrative assistant, which would be another major challenge. With her graduate degree in counseling and her outstanding teaching and managerial skills, Tiffany does much more than a typical administrative assistant, and she will be difficult to replace for a number of reasons. With or without Tiffany, the position needs to be restructured to make the salary more commensurate with the responsibilities. Also in terms of human resources, with Professor Hankin and other Johnston-affiliated faculty on sabbatical, we will need even more help from University faculty with student advising, contract committees, and graduation committees.

            We have ongoing concerns about the support Johnston receives from the University in terms of faculty resources. While, as mentioned above, we are the benefactors of much good will and commitment from across the College, we also know that if faculty resources do not keep up with the demands made upon academic programs, Johnston could suffer because we depend so much upon other faculty to advise and teach our students. We were able to recruit a few new faculty members to offer seminars and serve on contract committees, but we are always stretched and in need of further assistance.

            We plan to use the web site more and more as a virtual center where alumni, current students, prospective students, faculty, and staff can share information. Notably, we hope to do much of our curriculum-building on the web, leaving the face-to-face time for deeper discussions of faculty and student interests and how to engage them in a seminar. I believe that the site will also become a vital element in our efforts to raise the national profile for Johnston. For example, the publication of the Disgrace book is going to be simultaneous with an online discussion of the teaching of the novel with perhaps some of the Johnston pedagogical essays as the foundation. We also hope to use the web site for fundraising efforts.

            In that vein we recently began fruitful discussions with the Office of Development to focus Johnston development efforts. Ericka Smith has been working with Johnston to help us think about our message and audience as well as more efficient avenues for fundraising. I fear, however, that those efforts will be limited until alumni and friends see more of a commitment from the University administration to securing a safe and functional physical space for Johnston. Again, if President Dorsey could announce that Johnston is next in line for major renovations, some of this resistance could be overcome.

            The year will be a significant one for Johnston as we celebrate our fortieth year. The reunion will be a significant event for the Johnston community, and the APC will be discussing ways to create a critical discussion of Johnston on-campus to parallel the celebration that will occur in February.           

Appendix to the Annual Report

      Introduction and Acknowledgments: Bill McDonald

Michael G. McDunnah:  ’We are not asked to condemn’: Sympathy, Subjectivity and the Narration of Disgrace

James Boobar: Beyond Sympathy:A Bakhtinian Reading of Disgrace

Bill McDonald: ’Is it too late to educate the eye?’: David Lurie, Richard of St. Victor,

                  and ‘vision as eros’ in Disgrace

Kenneth Reinhard: Disgrace and the Neighbor: An Interchange with Bill McDonald

Pat Harrigan: ’To Live as Dogs or Pigs Live Under Us’: Accepting What's on Offer in Disgrace

Kim Middleton and Julie Townsend: Tenuous Arrangements: The Ethics of Rape in Disgrace

Sandra Shattuck: Dis(g)race, or White Man Writing”

Gary Hawkins: Clerk in a Post-Religious Age: Reading Lurie’s Remnant            

                  Romantic Temperament in Disgrace

Patricia Casey Sutcliffe: Saying it Right in Disgrace:  David Lurie, Faust, and

                  the Romantic Conception of Language

Kevin O’Neill: The Dispossession of David Lurie

Matthew Gray: Community Reading: Teaching Disgrace in an Alternative College Classroom

Kathy Ogren: Out of the Father’s House into a Community of Readers

Daniel Kiefer:  Sympathy for the Devil: On the Perversity of Teaching Disgrace

Nancy Best:  Teaching Disgrace in the Large Lecture Classroom

Bradley Butterfield: Discussing Disgrace in a Critical Theory Class 

Raymond Obstfeld: Disgrace in the Classroom: A Tale of Two Teaching Strategies

Jane Creighton: The Bodies of Others: A Meditation on the Environs of

                  Reading J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Caryl Phillips’ The Nature of Blood

Patricia Karlin-Neumann: Disgrace as a Teacher

         The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at The University of Redlands encourages students to set their own learning goals and then record those goals in written contracts. Consequently the standards for assessment may not be as easily defined as those used by other departments and programs on campus. But if one always remembers that “the contract sets the standard” for courses, for graduation contracts, and for narrative evaluations, our process and objectives for assessment are clear. The process of negotiation—in classes and in committees—always offers an opportunity for students to reflect on their learning aspirations, their skills, and their strong and weak areas. Faculty and peers help suggest the best ways to address problem areas and to fully develop their strengths. In essence, the written contract records this assessment opportunity.

         Course contracts: Students negotiate a written contract with faculty that obligates both parties to participate in the successful completion of the contract. In Johnston seminars (12-15 a semester), the entire class will set objectives and goals as the class is developed, and these ideas become a syllabus, albeit a fairly fluid one in many cases. In most other classes where student contract for narrative evaluation, the syllabus is the template that students and faculty use to develop a contract. That syllabus, of course, sets general objectives for the class. Johnston students are expected to consider the syllabus and identify their own personal learning goals in relationship to it. Faculty are expected to insist upon those topics, methods, and outcomes that are most important for the class. Because contracts are “open to negotiation,” faculty and students can adjust learning objectives as the class progresses, if necessary. Many faculty in Johnston seminars ask for a mid term evaluation of the class, for example, which allows for assessment throughout the term—not only at its conclusion.

Successful completion of the contract depends on a student finishing all the contracted work and then writing a self and faculty evaluation. Faculty hold up their side of the contract by writing a narrative evaluation in a timely manner, preferably within 6-8 wks. A student who fails to meet any aspect of a contract will be evaluated on that aspect of their learning goal, and in theory, a student can fail the entire course on the basis of one contractual obligation that goes unmet. Johnston students are subject to the same academic actions as other CAS students; the Johnston Registrar identifies problematic cases and the Director reviews their academic records. She then issues academic warning, probation, and disqualification if needed. The Johnston Registrar, who reads every evaluation, also reviews faculty evaluation writing and the Director, who reads selected evaluations to see patterns of instruction and assessment. Faculty who fail to write evaluations in a timely manner are reminded of their obligation, contacted by the director, and sometimes counseled to wait until evaluations are written before they teach a Johnston seminar in the future. Evaluation writing is also considered in the letters the Director writes for tenure and promotion.

Graduation contracts: In what is probably the most unique and academically central aspect of the Johnston program, students write an individualized graduation curriculum or plan, called the graduation contract. The contract communicates an individual student’s “dream education, “ which can reflect subject areas of interest, pedagogical, and living learning goals. All contracts must address three areas that the Johnston Program considers central to its mission: a concentration, liberal arts breadth, and a cross-cultural experience. Contract committees will also discuss senior projects, internships, and other experiential learning that may seem relevant to a contract. Committees work on a consensus model, and they can both suggest and stipulate that certain classes be added to a contract. The contract is negotiated with a committee the student does not select, although in the cases of B.S and Environmental Studies emphases, selected faculty from those programs will be asked to serve on the committee. Committee membership requires the advisor, three faculty, the Johnston Registrar, and two students. In practice, the contract committees ensure that every educational plan is assessed from the start, first by advisors with their advisees, and then by the full committee. Students “re-visit” that plan as seniors, revise and re-write their contracts to reflect any changes, and bring that contract back to a committee of their choice. If the original objectives have not been met, the student will not graduate.  Once again, the Johnston Registrar reads all contracts and identifies any that don’t meet the general standards of the Center. The Director must approve any changes in course listings that are proposed to the contract.

          On-going program effectiveness: Johnston participates in the self-study cycle, where the most comprehensive evaluation of effectiveness takes place. An Academic Policy Committee meets weekly to discuss any issues, including questions of consistency and standards that are raised by faculty and students. The Community Meeting, which is a gathering of all interested students will also identify and debate aspects of the academic program. The Director and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences also review the Johnston Program on a monthly basis.

The issues receiving the greatest attention at this time are: timely writing of evaluations; mentoring of faculty new to the Johnston contracting process; ensuring effective student evaluation of faculty; expanding the options and clarifying the understanding of cross-cultural learning, and evaluating the best size for the Johnston program, given current resources.

Integrated Semester Application

Integrated Semester

Kelly Hankin
  Days: To Be Determined
  Time: To Be Determined
  Units: 8- 12

Prerequisite:This course requires an application and permission from the instructor. 

What is the Johnston Integrated Semester?This class is a valuable, yet often mysterious course that is often mistaken for an Individualized Study. It is actually quite different. Whereas an Individualized Study enables a student to craft a class around a topic not necessarily offered at the University, Integrated Semester is a class for advanced students (typically juniors and seniors) who are ready to integrate their chosen fields of study into a large-scale project. Projects may vary, but all will combine some variety of learning modes, including research, creative practice, experiential learning, analytic work, teaching, etc. Typically, students register for 8 to 12 units, which require them to work on their projects for approximately 24 to 36 hours per week. Some students choose to enroll in one regular course during the semester, however the bulk of the semester’s work is dedicated to bringing the Integrated Semester project to fruition. The work is done independently, but students work in constant consultation with the professor of Integrated Semester and at least one additional faculty member. Weekly meetings with fellow Integrated Semester students, Integrated Semester faculty, and faculty advisor are expected, as is evidence of weekly progress towards project completion. Candidates for Integrated Semester must have a graduation contract on file, strong working relationships with the faculty consultants, and the ability to work independently.

If you are interested in joining this class, please submit answers to the following questions to Professor Kelly Hankin at kelly_hankin@redlands.edu by registration deadline.

Please describe the project in some detail. You might want to include a title and a description of what you want to accomplish. What questions are you addressing and why are they important to you?

Why is this work an Integrated Semester and not an Individualized Study?

Please describe the type of integration you plan to accomplish. How are the different aspects of the project related to one another?

Please describe the research methods and materials you plan to use in order to accomplish the project.

How many units of Integrated Semester are you applying for and how will you distribute those units in relation to the work you plan to accomplish? Be as specific as you can. If you do not think you can account for the units and hours of work time, you may want to reconsider the Integrated Semester and perhaps shift into an Individualized Study.

How does this project fit into your Graduation Contract and what work have you already done to prepare you for the Integrated Semester?

Describe how you plan to work with faculty members during the I.S.? If you have already identified faculty members to help with the project, please identify who they are. If not, please begin to think about whom you can work with on this project. It is necessary to work with a faculty advisor.

Upon receipt of this application, I will notify you about your status in the class. 

Contract Committee Cover Sheet

Thank you for serving on a Johnston Graduation Contract Committee.  This meeting is one of the most significant passages in a Johnston student’s education.  Since it has no direct analogue outside of Johnston, we offer the following perspectives on the education you are helping to design.

Our expectations for the contract negotiation process:

The graduation contract is the single most important negotiation Johnston students complete.  In this process, students identify and plan an individualized interdisciplinary education.  Johnston students typically negotiate this contract as sophomores; they are at a formative stage in their education and there is much they want to learn about.  We don’t expect them to have a full understanding of the course of study they imagine for themselves.  While students will come to the committee with differing levels of clarity about their visions, as well as varying abilities to articulate their educational values, they all benefit from the committee’s insights and assistance.  This is not a PhD defense!

• Prior to the meeting you will attend, students have written and reviewed the contract with their advisors – our colleagues.  At the end of the committee meeting, we assume that the student and advisor will continue to use this contract as a basis for future advising.

• We want to honor the educational plan a student crafts by providing them an opportunity – in writing and in conversation with us – to improve that plan.  To that end, please be open to the case a student makes, and embrace their creative visions.  By all means, look for ways to improve the contract, but please resist the urge to substitute the contract you might prefer for the one that is before you.  Don’t privilege your discipline before the student’s interests.

• A convener will facilitate the meeting and the Johnston registrar keeps an official record.  We must reach consensus as a committee.  We don’t want students to agree to a contract that they are not invested in, and we should not agree to one that we think needs more work.  When consensus cannot be reached, we ask the student and faculty advisor to consult some more on the contract, and a second session will be scheduled.

Our expectations for content and some questions we ask to evaluate contracts:

• How effectively has this student made a case for the individualized education we have promised to help them achieve through the Johnston Center?  This should be clear from the narrative and from the presumably unique combinations of classes that the student proposes.  Does the narrative communicate student reflection or enthusiasm for the course of study?

• Our students choose a variety of ways to express themselves in the written narration.  Does the style of writing serve as a strong example of the student’s thinking at this stage in her educational process?   You may want to write comments on your copy of the contract and give it to the student and advisor to consider.  Everyone rewrites this narrative as a senior.

• Does the contract have the structural features we need: a narrative, course listing by chronology, course listing by concentration and breadth?  Has the student accounted for an integrated or interdisciplinary concentration?

• Our students are not required to meet LAF designations.  We ask instead that our students will “address the liberal arts,” which we construe broadly.  Students make a case for their unique “breadth” – just as they do for their concentrations.  Committee members typically look for some combination of departmental and interdisciplinary classes that study humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics or quantitative reasoning, creative expression, foreign languages and cross-cultural immersion.  The student might want to make a case for unique categories – do they make sense?

• Courses are not counted in more than one listing under concentration and breadth.  But interdisciplinary study may lead the student to link concentration and breadth, selecting courses that are most meaningful to them.  Can we help them make those links?

• Is a senior project proposed?  What might we suggest about community service?  What kinds of experiential learning – i.e. internships – might be appropriate?

• If the student has identified a particular career path, are there specific classes, internships, and/or “certifications” they need to consider?

• Does this contract include study through Johnston seminars and a commitment to learning through contracts and narrative evaluations?  If not, should the student continue in Johnston?

• Has the student addressed participation in the Johnston community?

• Is there enough time to negotiate this contract?  We need a minimum of three semesters to negotiate with a student – preferably more.  Students will return to committee as seniors to review how well they have met their learning goals.  Will a student achieve a minimum of 128 units?

·      The convener calls the meeting together  and explains the process

·      Introductions

·      The advisor presents the student to the committee, commenting on the contract process or any other elements that are relevant

·      Teresa Area, the Johnston registrar, comments on the file, especially in regard to units.

·      The student speaks on behalf of her contract

·      Open discussion of the contract. Possibilities are stipulations, suggestions, and/or rewrites.

·      Committee, including the student, reaches consensus on the contract

·      The student is now officially Johnston

You may have heard that we are doing a self-study, an detailed report on Johnston that will be presented to the university in the coming months. We are very interested in getting student input on every aspect of the study. In particular we would like for you to tell us about your experience in FYS. If you would, please respond to this email by answering the following questions:

Has the FYS been helpful to you in orientation, advising, and contracting. If so, how? If not, why not?

Johnston is a living-learning community; knowing who your peers are as learners and students is as crucial to the Johnston environment as  knowing who they are socially. Being in FYS forces us to see each other in an academic light--it often inspires thoughtful discussion after class, which is a combination of social and intellectual interaction that is abundant on complex, and is a large part of what makes Johnston unique. The peer advisers that co-teach FYS help guide this social-intellectual interaction due to their approachability as students (both in the literal sense that they're physically on complex, and in the figurative sense that they're in the same age group, and thus easier to relate to) and their enthusiasm about learning. When we aren't discussing readings in class, our advisers and peers share examples of how they've contracted classes, their unfavorable experiences with non-Johnston professors in regard to contracts, as well as the favorable. They give insight on their experiences with different professors and explain the way that they teach without saying that one professor is "good" or "bad"--they realize that each student's experience is different. I like FYS--in fact, I recommend it.

I think that FYS has been really helpful as far as orientation, advising, and contracting is concerned. From the very first week, I felt like I had a group of people that were in the exact same boat as me, and I got an idea of what college was going to be like before it started. It made college a little less scary. And Ben is an amazing advisor. He has a non-Johnston perspective, but he also knows a lot about the Johnston program. Contracting was probably the most helpful. I had no idea what to do as far as making courses more interesting to me when I first got here. I was completely lost, so Ben and Michelle's advice was really helpful.

FYS has been very helpful to me in these areas. It helped me understand what is going on with the university and how Johnston works, what classes to choose and how to contract.

This is a tough question to answer because at times, FYS has been my favorite class and at other times I've hated it. It was definitely helpful in meeting people at the beginning. The advising/contracting aspect of it was also helpful. As far as course content goes, I would have liked it to focus more on Johnston specifically. But I don't really know in what way. I enjoyed the first rotation where it was very laid-back and just a big discussion, I didn't really like the second rotation where I felt like it was more of a lecture. It felt like a class haha, imagine that! We'll see how the third rotation goes though. But yes, FYS has been helpful in orientation, advising, and contracting. :) Hope that helped....

Student Feedback for Self Study collected from individuals and groups, prompts provided at community meeting on 11/18/08

1)    Why did you choose Johnston?

a)    Johnston academically provides me the freedom to better and more acutely and more successfully study what I want.

c)    I wanted a say in what I studied and the freedom to have my educational, intellectual, and personal self respected in both a social and educational realm.

d)    Because of the open doors and uniqueness of the community.  After visiting and being showed around, I knew I would get lost on a big school and shut myself off.  Here I have whole community that encourages me to join the fun.

e)    It forced me to be more of a self-directed person and to look at my education more holistically.

f)      I choose Johnston because someone told me it was extra work, and that no one liked Johnston students, I took it as a challenge.

2)    Has Johnston fulfilled your expectations? Why/why not?

a)    So far yes.  Sometimes our community struggles, but we always end up coming together again.

b)    Yes, everything I wanted in so far as special and financial restrictions allow.

c)    In a sense.  I romanticize it much more when I’m gone, telling every how amazing it is based on how it’s supposed to be.  In reality, I find myself walking down empty halls, surrounded by closed doors.  I still love Johnston and think it is more amazing than any other college, but I think we have a lot of work to do to be the community that we say we are.

d)    It has fulfilled my expectations in allowing me to create my grad contract, choose and contract my classes and control my living situation.  It has not fulfilled my expectations in the apathy of some members of the community.

e)    I choose Johnston because someone told me it was extra work, and that no one liked Johnston students, I took it as a challenge.

3)    How is Johnston an intentional community?

a)    We are a strange and diverse group, who wouldn’t normally come together, but we all want to be Johnston and we all want to be a community, so we have to work at creating and facilitating our group.

b)    We choose to interact with each other

c)    Consensus process, community events, academic support.

d)    I think we are an intentional community that we talk so damn much about it, but I think we spend a lot more time sitting in Holt lobby talking about what we are and aren’t doing and not nearly enough time actually being a community.

e)    It is an intentional community in that people choose to live here and take an active role in their friends and their own education.

f)      We are an intentional community because when you enroll you know you will be living with fellow Johnstonians and that we do have a door policy and other exclusively Johnston habits/events that tie us together. Buffalooo!

4)    How does it feel to be left out of the community?

a)    It would feel bad, but I don’t feel like it’s ever happened to me.

b)    Scary, like high school.  Oppressed, alone, depressed, marginalized.

c)    It feels really shitty because we talk so much about how open we are to everyone, so it hurts that much more to feel like you aren’t a part of it.

d)    It feels like you have no real friends, only people who talk to you on occasion because you are Johnston.

e)     Saying this from experience, it really hurts. I felt left out after GYST as others did too. It hurt that we called ourselves a community but were at the same time excluding some of those community members. The good thing is that our community tried to work together to overcome this.

5)    How does Johnston community membership help to facilitate growth as: a student, an individual, a community member?

a)    We learn through and about others and grow together, acting and reacting on each others strengths and weaknesses.  You learn a lot, academically about others, about yourself.

b)    Johnston allows each student to personalize their education and because of that.

c)    I would not have survived my college career either academically or literally without Johnston.  It has given me the strength to integrate all of these into one person and consciousness.

d)    It helps facilitate growth as a student due to the ability to choose and work with your peers on your school work.  As an individual it helps you see more sides of life and expand your views on life.

e)    As a student, we are able to talk to others to get help with our work our ideas to help us continue or get started with that work. As an individual it helps us grow, we learn to live with many different varieties of people and habits. And as a community member we learn to grow with each other through the thick and thin, and how to continually deal/ put up with/ love each other.

6)    What does it mean to take control of your education?

a)    Responsibility, attendance, passion, hard work, anger, eureka moments, thinking in new ways, being blown away, staying up late and getting up early, never going back.

b)    Doing what will allow you to learn and grow this most rather than an impersonal default that mainstream education limits us to.

c)    It means this power to study what you love, to build your life and your future as you wants.  This power to prepare and learn in a way that is consistently in the real world.  Be respected academically.

d)    Put passion into my education, not obligation; not fitting into one thing – drawing can a lot to develop it; not fitting either the Johnston or non-Johnston model; expanding on your skills-reflecting on it-developing it; constantly thinking about your questioning process; learning everyday, everywhere; drawing parallels life and studies and how it related to who you are

e)    It takes a willingness to look beyond what is easy to look at yourself and what you want and what you really need as a person.  Also, it takes a faculty who are willing to stretch their personal feelings about education to help students own their work.

f)      It's what we do everyday! We decide what we want to do when, but even more then that we form our own education- we contract. We decide everything that goes on with our education, but of course with help from the community.

g)    A large part of taking control of your education is to realize your lack of control and to work with it.

7)    What are the problems with Johnston community?

a)    The Johnston community is a jigsaw puzzle where there are far easy fits.  Accommodating each member of the community means, sacrificing things that can be hard for people.

c)    Conflicting and diverse missions.  Many goals and little time.  Balancing out of class events with one work and supporting.  Lack of SPACE and FUNDING.

d)    Apathy, inaction, no deep connection, no history, no story telling, “direction” on activities, better orientation, burn out, more compromise.

e)    We talk the talk but don’t walk the walk

f)      The apathy of certain community members towards community events and functions and the lack of participation from all members of the community

8)    What are some rewards of Johnston community membership?

a)    The indescribable bond of being a Buffalo.  Hundreds of close friends, so many possibilities.

b)    Family-like atmosphere, support

c)    I feel inspired and safe and engaged almost all the time.  I feel stimulated in a way that I have not in any other academic setting.

d)    Academic freedom and opportunity, years of history, invigorating diversity in our similarities, co learning from peers

e)    A group of people you can always hang with and who understand you.  A sense of being part of something bigger than the rest of the U of R.

f)      We have another family to go to! I don't know what's better than that!

g)    Johnston provides its community members with a safe space, and a community of very different people with different goals who can come together to unite under a common cause. It allows acceptance of different ideals and a degre of interest in the individual. Even the physical space, all open doors and extensive amounts of common space, allow us to feel less awkward and be more okay with awkward situations. They are mutable definitions for educational experiences. Finally, there is a certain amount of pressure put on community members to simply CARE, about alternative ideals, about the community as a whole, and about people.

9)    How do use of our space affect our community?

a)    It enables and prohibits.  There is no give without take.  Space should be utilized but there will always be difference of opinion of the best use.  Consensus is the only solution.

b)    It’s a problem when there is not enough space to house community members that want to live on complex.

c)    Lack of housing seriously detracts from our community.  Building safety – we don’t feel safe.  Bekins is falling down. What about teaching space? Even space? We simply don’t have enough for any of these things.  We don’t physically have enough space to meet as a community?

10)What’s Johnston impact on the greater U. Redlands community?

a)    Sometimes we are a beacon of fresh and free thought.  Sometimes we only create campus divide on a club level, on a academic level, we do a lot of good, but to U of R climate/opinion towards Johnston is intensely too negative.

b)    Classes, organization throughout campus

c)    So many of our programs and policies have been adopted by the University at large (CAs, pride, diversity) but I feel that we aren’t recognized for it.  Our events are often open to all.  We inspire social change.

d)    We do all this but we don’t get the power or respect.  I came here just for Johnston.  We contribute as students to classroom attitudes/dynamics.

e)    We bring flavor to the campus! We are the hot sauce to this taco stand! ha ha :)

11)Please describe an experience that you had with Johnston that has impacted you most.

a)    Too many to name.  I am constantly changed greatly by many experiences here.

b)    Someone blocked a community consensus that I couldn’t be at on the basis that I might not feel safe in the community had it passed.  I can not tell you how much that touched me and validated me as an individual.

c)    Midnight buffalos! We were the only ones who bonded like this, and it was especially awesome being a freshman!

12)Are there any resources that the Johnston Center needs to acquire in order for you to be more successful? Please consider physical, academic, and other resources in your answer.

a)    More autonomy, not socially, but academically, fiscally, and administratively

b)    Classes that are set up to generate discussion in our “Johnston pedagogy”, housing for our growing community

c)    SPACE: living, learning, teaching, etc.  FUNDING for academics. Professors in more areas or Johnston associated professor.  Technologically capable, moldable classrooms and living/learning spaces.  Movement dance/art space.  Music equipment, lockable Johnston.  The RIGHT to take any classes (CAS included) that I want.

13)Is there anything else that you’d like to say about your Johnston education and experience?

a)    It’s great

·      Greg Salyer, Associate Professsor of Literature and Religion, Director

·      Kathy Ogren, Professor of History and Women’s Studies, Virginia C. Hunsaker Distinguished Teaching Chair

·      Kelly Hankin, Associate Professor of Film Studies

·      Julie Townsend, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities